The universe always surprises the scientific community, for its constant changes and discoveries that show that we are a very small part of its history. One of the most relevant objects of study is usually black holes, these giant masses of matter that absorb everything in its path.
This is why the discovery of a group of scientists from the national university of Australia became relevant, who found a black hole that existed 900 million years ago.
The hole was discovered thanks to a pair of machines that detect gravitational waves. These devices, positioned in the United States and Italy, received the gravitational wave of the event that occurred 855 billion kilometers away.
Physics teacher Susan Scott compared the black hole and its strength with the classic Pacman video game:
Nearly 900 million years ago, this black hole ate a very dense star known as a neutron star, in a similar way as Pacman does – possibly absorbed the star in an instant.
He explained that after detecting the gravitational wave, they immediately pointed their cameras towards the area where it came from and thus have visual confirmation of the event. Unfortunately, they found nothing.
The team had to make calculations to understand what happened and assumed that the black hole was so powerful that it absorbed the neutron star in a few minutes. Fortunately, artist Carl Knox made an image that illustrates what the moment the star was absorbed should look like.
According to his calculations, the black hole could have a mass 5 times smaller than that of the Sun, something that had never been detected so far. And much less had it been seen that a black hole “ate” a star so large (it measures 2.5 times more than our star king).
What do you think of this discovery?