Researchers using the European Gaia spacecraft have discovered a black hole in a binary system located 1,500 light-years away that weighs 33 times the mass of the Sun, making it the heaviest known black hole in the Milky Way. Black hole discovered with data from European spacecraft GaiaIt is three times more massive than known black holes in our galaxy.

An international research team, including researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) led by Professor Tsevi Maze, has discovered a star orbiting a black hole 33 times the mass of the Sun and located 1,500 light-years from Earth. . Black hole discovered with data from European spacecraft GaiaIt is three times more massive than any other known black hole in our galaxy.

Spacecraft Gaia It was launched by the European Space Agency in 2013 and has since regularly measured the position and brightness of more than a billion stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, with unprecedented precision equivalent to determining the position of a single star grain. There is sand on the Moon up to a millimeter thick.

An organization consisting of hundreds of scientists from across Europe processes the data from the spacecraft and makes it available to the entire scientific community. A research team led by Professor (Emeritus) Tsevi Mazeh from the TAU Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy is participating in the study of binary star systems discovered using spacecraft data. The research was published in a prestigious journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

A large sample of binary stars should also contain systems that include a black hole, one of the rarest celestial objects in the universe. The existence of a black hole is one of the most surprising phenomena in the universe, and its existence was predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity in 1939.

According to the accepted theory, when the fuel of the nuclear combustion process occurring in the core of a star runs out, it collapses on itself, towards its center. If the star is large enough, all remaining matter will collapse into a single point of infinite density. Therefore, a black hole can be considered as the “corpse” of a star that has completed its life and collapsed into itself.

Astrophysicists are still trying to understand the extreme conditions that cause matter to collapse into a central point, and so every black hole discovery is accompanied by great excitement among astronomers.

Anticipating that the data the spacecraft continues to collect will reveal more black holes, Professor Mazet, together with Professor Laurent Ayer from the University of Geneva, formed a small team to search for black holes using the spacecraft’s data. They included scientists from France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Poland and Switzerland.

Analyzing the new data, the team encountered a binary system containing a special, unprecedented black hole measuring 33 solar masses, about 1,500 light-years away. The new black hole is three times larger than other known black holes in the Milky Way galaxy. The binary system, called Gaia BH3, contains an ordinary star that appears to have formed more than ten billion years ago, when our galaxy was still very young. The star revolves around the black hole in an 11-year cycle.

At the suggestion of Professor Mazeh, it was decided to publish the sensational statement immediately, rather than waiting for the regular publication of all discovered systems. The entire spacecraft crew, including researchers from TAU: Professor Shay Zucker, Director of the Porter School of Environmental and Earth Sciences, Dr. Simon Feigler, MD. Sahar Shahaf (now at the Weizmann Institute), Dr. Dolev Bashi (now at the Weizmann Institute). University of Cambridge), Abraham Binnenfeld (student researcher) and Oded Orenstein (second-year undergraduate student) are listed as authors of a research paper published today reporting on the discovery.

Professor Tsevi Mazeh: “This is an exciting discovery of the largest black hole in a binary system known today in the galaxy. It took nearly thirty years from the first hypothesis of the existence of a black hole to the discovery of the first black hole, and more than fifty years passed before we discovered Gaia BH3, the binary system with the longest cycle known to date. . It is amazing how humanity managed to navigate the vast spaces of the universe and discover such mysterious objects. “I believe the discovery will lead to a new way of thinking about the existence and prevalence of black holes roaming large areas of our galaxy.”