Like an ancient cardigan, the Milky Way should be absolutely riddled with black holes.
. Experiments set up to monitor the sky detect thousands of microlensing events every year; most of them are stars moving in front of other stars, which is not surprising, considering how many stars are out there.
On 2 June 2011, two separate microlensing surveys – the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment and Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics – independently recorded an event that ended up peaking on July 20. This event, named MOA-2011-BLG-191/OGLE-2011-BLG-0462 , was remarkable. Not only was it unusually long, around 270 days, but it also showed unusually high magnification. Since high magnification events are sensitive to perturbations, such as might be seen from a planet orbiting the lensing object, scientists converged to take follow-up observations and conduct analyses.Observations of the region were taken on eight separate occasions using the Hubble Space Telescope, up until 2017.
In fact, they were even able to take measurements of the black hole. The changes observed in the light of the distant star allowed the team to calculate its mass and motion. The black hole, they found, has a mass about 7.1 times the mass of the Sun. That would make its event horizon around justTake a moment to marvel at that.
And here's where it gets even cooler. The team calculated how fast that object is moving through the Milky Way: 45 kilometers per second. That makes it not just any old black hole but a runaway black hole.It was probably ejected into space when its precursor star exploded in a supernova. If such a supernova explosion is lopsided, the uneven force can flick the star's collapsed core off into space, in what we call a natal kick.
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