Astronomers have found stellar mass and supermassive black holes, but they're still on the hunt for an intermediate size; black holes with thousands of times the mass of the Sun. One natural place to look is at the heart of the Milky Way, near our galaxy's supermassive black hole. Researchers have examined the region around the galactic core and the movement of stars whipping around the central black hole. Although they didn't find evidence for a companion black hole, they've set size constraints on what could be there.
  • FaceDeer@kbin.social
    3·
    11 months ago

    Sadly, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines applies to this one too. :)

    The article’s about an attempt to determine whether there’s an intermediate-mass black hole (one with hundreds or thousands of solar masses) orbiting close to our galactic supermassive black hole by looking for perturbations of the orbit of a star designated S0-2 around it.

    The team found that to the limits of observation, there was no evidence of gravitational perturbations on the orbit of S0-2. This doesn’t mean there isn’t an intermediate-mass black hole in the area, but it does put some upper bounds on the mass if it does exist. Based on the data, if a hypothetical IMBH orbits outside the orbit of S0-2, say with an orbital radius between 1,000 AU and 4,000 AU, then it could have a mass no greater than 1,000 to 10,000 Suns. If there is an IMBH orbiting Sag A* closer than S0-2, then it can have a mass no greater than 400 Suns.

    Those aren’t tight constraints, but they do confirm that there isn’t a large intermediate black hole orbiting Sagittarius A*. If it has a smaller IMBH companion, it’s currently beyond our ability to detect.