{"id":1378,"date":"2022-11-28T10:05:52","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T15:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2022-11-28T10:05:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T15:05:54","slug":"leo-i-black-new-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/leo-i-black-new-search\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo I* Supermassive Black Hole Search Method Proposed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have proposed a method for observing what could be the second-closest supermassive black hole<\/a> to Earth: a behemoth 3 million times the mass of the Sun hosted by the dwarf galaxy Leo I.<\/p>\n

Late in 2021, an independent group of astronomers proposed the supermassive black hole designated Leo I*. The team observed stars gaining speed as they approached the center of the galaxy, which is evidence of a black hole, but it was not possible to directly image the black hole’s emission. Black holes are extremely elusive objects that occasionally like to play hide and seek.<\/p>\n

“Rays of light cannot escape their event horizons, but the environment around them can be extremely bright, if enough material falls into their gravitational well. But if a black hole is not accreting mass, instead, it emits no light and becomes impossible to find with our telescopes,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

said lead author Fabio Pacucci.<\/p>\n

Red Giants Around Leo I*<\/h2>\n
\"Leo

Leo I* Supermassive Black Hole spectral emmsion distribution.
Continuum sensitivities for the Very Large Array (VLA), Atacama Large Millimeter\/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and Chandra are displayed.
Credit: Fabio Pacucci and Abraham Loeb 2022 ApJL 940 L33 CC-BY<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the difficulty with Leo I, a dwarf galaxy<\/a> so devoid of gas that it is frequently referred to as a “fossil.” So, should we give up on trying to detect it? The astronomers say maybe not.<\/p>\n

In their research, they propose that the accretion rate required to observe the black hole could be provided by a small amount of mass lost from stars circling it.<\/p>\n

“Old stars become very big and red, we call them red giant stars. Red giants typically have\u00a0strong winds that carry a fraction of their mass to the environment. The space around Leo I* seems to contain enough of these ancient stars to make it observable,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pacucci explained.<\/p>\n

Second-closest Supermassive Black Hole<\/h2>\n
\"leo

The ultra-faint Milky Way companion galaxy Leo I appears as a faint patch to the right of the bright star, Regulus. Credit: Scott Anttila Anttler<\/p><\/div>\n

Observing Leo I* may prove groundbreaking if it could be done.<\/p>\n

“It would be the second-closest supermassive black hole after the one at the center of our galaxy, with a very similar mass but hosted by a galaxy that is a thousand times less massive than the Milky Way. This fact challenges everything we know about how galaxies and their central supermassive\u00a0black holes\u00a0co-evolve. How did such an oversized baby end up being born from a slim parent?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

said Avi Loeb, the other co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

Are We There Yet?<\/h2>\n

Decades of research indicate that the majority of massive galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole at their center, and that the black hole’s mass is a tenth of a percent of the total mass of the spheroid of stars surrounding it.<\/p>\n

“In the case of Leo I, we would expect a much smaller black hole. Instead, Leo I appears to contain a black hole a few million times the mass of the Sun, similar to that hosted by the Milky Way. This is exciting because science usually advances the most when the unexpected happens,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Loeb said.<\/p>\n

So, when can we expect an image of the black hole? We are not there yet, according to Pacucci. Leo I* is trying to hide, but it produces too much radiation to do so for very long.<\/p>\n

The team has acquired time on the Chandra X-ray Observatory in space and the Very Large Array<\/a> radio telescope in New Mexico and is currently analyzing the new data.<\/p>\n

Reference: Fabio Pacucci, Avi Loeb. Accretion from Winds of RGB Stars May Reveal the Supermassive Black Hole in Leo I. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 940 L33
\nDOI 10.3847\/2041-8213\/ac9b21<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have proposed a method for observing what could be the second-closest supermassive black hole to Earth: a behemoth 3 million times the mass of the Sun hosted by the dwarf galaxy Leo I. Late in 2021, an independent group of astronomers proposed the supermassive black hole designated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[96,181],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1384,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}