Humanity just 'digs up' a treasure trove of 300 of the rarest black holes in the universe?

Astronomers have used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to discover a treasure trove of the universe's rarest black holes.

Simulation of a supermassive black hole 'dealing with' its prey, a star

Black holes are born from the collapse of massive stars and mature by devouring gas, dust, stars, and other black holes.

Astrophysicists are confident that all large galaxies, including our own Milky Way, contain black holes at their centers. However, they have had difficulty finding evidence for the existence of smaller black holes, the kind found inside dwarf galaxies.

Black holes are currently divided into two main types: the first is stellar-mass black holes (with masses ranging from several million to several dozen times that of the Sun), and the second is supermassive black holes (ranging from several million to about 40 billion times the mass of the Sun).

However, evidence of black holes growing from stellar to supermassive is rare. Astronomers call this group of black holes intermediate masses, with masses between 100 and 100,000 times that of the Sun.

While scientists have found evidence of 150 intermediate-mass black hole candidates, none of them have been officially confirmed yet.

Revealing the portrait of the "gentle giant" black hole in the Milky Way galaxy

Researchers are using DESI to search for mid-mass black holes, according to a new report published in the Astrophysical Journal. And the results are extremely promising, according to the report published in the Astrophysical Journal .

Using DESI, researchers scanned 410,000 galaxies, discovering 2,500 dwarf galaxy candidates and about 300 of the universe's rarest black hole candidates.

Author Ragadeepika Pucha, an astronomer at the University of Utah (USA), said the data collected will help astronomers piece together information to better understand how black holes grow from their smallest state to become supermassive black holes, as well as how they shape the galaxies that form around them.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nhan-loai-vua-dao-trung-kho-bau-gom-300-ho-den-hiem-nhat-vu-tru-185250222111635032.htm