Astronomers have discovered the first binary star orbiting a supermassive black hole. The star pair in question orbits the cosmic Titan Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way.
this double stardesignated as D9, was found in the collected information very large telescope (VLT), located on the summit of Paranal Mountain, an 8,645-foot (2,635-meter) mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert. By measuring their speeds, the team behind the discovery was surprised to find that they were two stars, not one.
In fact, these double stars are so close Sergeant A* Survive this huge gravity black hole suggest that these environments may actually be stable enough to allow The birth of a planetsay the scientists behind the discovery. “Black holes are not as destructive as we thought,” said study lead author and Florian Peißker, scientist at the University of Cologne said in a statement.
The team’s findings were published on Tuesday (December 17) in the journal Nature Communications.
Let’s persevere together…
Although the discovery suggests that the surroundings of supermassive black holes may be more stable than previously suspected, the surrounding turbulent environment Sergeant A* This means that while binary profiles may exist, these partnerships may be fleeting.
The age of the D9 star is estimated to be only 2.7 million years, which may seem like a dauntingly long time, considering the age of the Sun is estimated to be 4.6 billion Time really just flies by in the blink of an eye.
Astronomers may have captured these stars at just the right moment. Eventually, the stars of D9 will be forced to come together to trigger a stellar merger.
“This only provides a brief window cosmic time scale Looking at such a binary system – we succeeded!
The discovery of such a young star around Sgr A* has taught scientists something new about these turbulent flows. A black hole dominated environmentalso.
In other words, the region around a supermassive black hole is not as chaotic as scientists previously thought to be too chaotic to form stars.
“The D9 system shows clear signs of gas and dust surrounding its star, suggesting it may be a very young star system that must have formed near a supermassive black hole,” said team member Michal Zajaček from Masaryk University and the University of Cologne.
The D9 binary star system exists in a fascinating group of stars called the S cluster. These stars spin at incredible speeds due to the huge gravitational pull of Sagittarius A*, which has a mass equivalent to about 4.3 million suns.
Arguably the most interesting objects in the S cluster are objects that look like clouds of gas and dust but behave like stars, called “G object”.
D9 was discovered while astronomers were trying to spot these strange phenomena. “Puffy” G object Actually yes.
One current theory suggests they may have been double star Like D9, they were forced to merge, leaving behind a cloud of material surrounding other stars that had not yet merged.
Therefore, the G-Object can give us a glimpse into the future of the D9.
The nature of the objects surrounding Sgr A* remains a mystery, but astronomers are working to uncover new clues.
VLT’s GRAVITY+ upgrades and upcoming very large telescope (ELT) should make this picture clearer in the future.
“Our findings allow us to speculate on the existence of planets, since these planets typically form around young stars,” Peck concluded. “It seems only a matter of time before a planet is discovered at the center of the Milky Way.”