Millions of invisible black holes float freely around our galaxy. Now astronomers think they can spot them.
But if a black hole is not inflicting chaos with its gravitational force, there’s hardly anything to detect. That’s often the case with these moving black holes. So astronomers like Lu use another technique called“What we do is we wait for the chance alignment of one of these free-floating black holes and a background star,” Lu explains. “When the two align, the light from the background star is warped by the gravity of the black hole [in front of it].
Astronomers use microlensing to study all kinds of temporary phenomena in the universe, from supernovae to exoplanets transiting around their stars. But it’s tricky to do with ground-based telescopes, as the Earth’s atmosphere can blur the images. Figuring out what caused the wobble and change of intensity in a star’s light requires two measurements: brightness and position. Astronomers observe that same spot in the sky over time to see how the light changes as the object passes in front of the star. This gives them the data they need to calculate the mass of that object, which in turn determines whether it’s a black hole or a neutron star.
As the two teams gathered data from 2011 to 2017, their analyses revealed distinctly different masses for that compact object. Sahu’s team determined that the roaming object has a mass seven times that of our sun, which would put it squarely in black hole territory. But Lam and Lu’s team calculated it to be less massive, somewhere between 1.6 and 4.4 solar masses, which spans both possibilities.
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