What is The Universe Ultimate End? Black Hole Reveals Truths

Black holes have fascinated astronomers for generations, and continued research has revealed some truly magnificent truths about the Universe’s ultimate dead-end. A team of astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan have discovered signs of what may be the second largest black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, according to a release from the observatory.

There is two typke known, stellar-mass black holes & supermassive black holes (SMBH)

Astronomers already know about two sizes of black holes: stellar-mass black holes, formed after the gigantic explosions of very massive stars; and supermassive black holes (SMBH) often found at the centers of galaxies. A number of SMBHs have been found, but no one knows how the SMBHs are formed. One idea is that they are formed from mergers of many intermediate mass black holes. But so far, no firm observational evidence for intermediate mass black holes has been found.

A team of Japanese astronomers used the Nobeyama 45-meter Radio Telescope, which is managed by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), to make the discovery. Researchers believe the black hole could help them to uncover why supermassive black holes are a consistent feature in the center of most large galaxies.

Researchers suggest that black holes start out small and grow as they engulf matter and combine with other black holes. However, there is a lot of confusion around black holes as they are observed on either the small or very large scale, with no medium – a puzzle scientists are hoping to solve with the discovery of the new black hole.

According to lead researcher, Tomoharu Oka, from Keio University in Japan, the medium-sized black hole was discovered some 200 light years away from the Milky Way’s central black hole — Sagittarius A* (Sgr. A*).

In a new study, the radio astronomers detailed how they witnessed a gas cloud called CO-0.40-0.22 caught in a strange gravitational storm that was pulling matter in different directions, at different speeds.

Black holes form after a supernova takes place, or when a large star explodes at the end of its life.

Supermassive black holes have masses that range from several millions to billions of times the mass of our own sun. Unlike stellar-mass black holes, no one knows how supermassive black holes form.

Now, a team of experts in Japan may have found what could be considered as the second most massive black hole – next only to the Sgr. A* – in the Milky Way. The discovery may possibly help shed light on the evolution of black holes.

Newly fund Black Hole is an Enigmatic Gas Cloud With An Interesting Characteristic

What’s curious about the discovery is that the massive black hole was not directly detected by scientists, and that what they first caught present instead had an unusual characteristic.

Led by Professor Tomoharu Oka of the Keio University, the group of astronomers had located a mysterious gas cloud named CO-0.40-0.22, a space object that is about 200 light-years away from Sgr. A*.

Researchers detected the enigmatic gas cloud through the use of the Nobeyama 45-m telescope in Japan and the Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) in Chile. Japan’s National Astronomical Society operated both telescopes.

What scientists found unusual is that the gas cloud CO-0.40-0.22 had an unusually wide velocity dispersion, meaning that the cloud holds gas that has a wide variety of speeds.

Basically, velocity dispersion is the spread and velocities of stars or gas within a galaxy, a statistical average of the combined motions of many stars.

Again, the team used the Nobeyama 45-m telescope to obtain 21 emission lines from 18 molecules. The results showed that the gas cloud has an elliptical shape and consists of two components.

The first component was compact and had low density, with a very wide velocity dispersion of 100 kilometers per second or 62 miles per second. The second component was dense and extended 10 light-years, with only a narrow velocity dispersion.

The researchers then used their observations to model the storm on a computer, concluding that they had found a “massive” black hole that is the “eye” of the space storm, Discovery News reports. The black hole is 100,000 times the size of our Sun and fits into the intermediate-mass category, second only to the Sgr. A* black hole.
The discovery marks the first such observation of its kind.

“Considering the fact that no compact objects are seen in X-ray or infrared observations, as far as we know, the best candidate for the compact massive object is a black hole,” Dr Oka said in a press release.

However, researchers are unsure whether intermediate-mass black holes are rare – or just hard to find. If these black holes are rare, it could lead to changes in the current models of astrophysics.

According to Discovery News, some theories estimate that the Milky Way could be home to 100 million black holes – despite only a small percentage of these being found thus far.

These results open a new way to search for black holes with radio telescopes. Recent observations have revealed that there are a number of wide-velocity-dispersion compact clouds similar to CO-0.40-0.22. The team proposes that some of those clouds might contain black holes. A study suggested that there are 100 million black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy, but X-ray observations have only found dozens so far. Most of the black holes may be “dark” and very difficult to see directly at any wavelength.

The observation results were published as Oka et al. “Signature of an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Central Molecular Zone of Our Galaxy” in the Astrophysical Journal Letters issued on January 1, 2016. The research team members are Tomoharu Oka, Reiko Mizuno, Kodai Miura, Shunya Takekawa, all at Keio University.

Intermediate-mass black holes are truly mysterious creatures. They are the “missing” link of black hole evolution; we have stellar mass black holes (that form after the supernova death of a massive star) and we have supermassive black holes (that live in the cores of most galaxies), but if black holes start small and grow by merging with other black holes and consuming matter, they must go through a “medium” phase.