For many years, astronomers have believed that the mass of a black hole must be at least five times that of the sun. However, they found a black hole with a mass of 3.3 times that of the sun. This is the smallest known black hole in the Milky way.
Todd middot, the first author of the research paper and professor of astronomy at Ohio State University; Thompson said: 'there are signs that there is another type that we haven't really explored when we are looking for black holes.'
"People are trying to understand how supernovae explode, how supermassive black stars explode, and how elements form in supermassive stars," he said. Therefore, if we can reveal a new kind of black holes, we can know more information about which stars explode, which do not explode, which form black holes and which form neutron stars. This will open up a new field of research. "
It is reported that black holes have such strong gravity that nothing (including light) can escape. They form when stars die, collapse and then explode. Neutron stars are small and dense. They are formed when stars die and collapse.
The report points out that for many years, astronomers have only known black holes with a mass of 5 to 15 times that of the sun. If the mass of neutron stars is more than 2.5 times that of the sun, scientists think they will collapse into black holes.
In 2017, scientists used the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory (LIGO) to find that two black holes merged in a galaxy 1.8 billion light-years away. The mass of one black hole is 31 times that of the sun, and the mass of the other black hole is 25 times that of the sun.
The report believes that this indicates that the mass of the black hole may be greater than the previous record.
Researchers suspect that this means that black holes with a mass between the largest neutron star and the smallest black hole found so far may also be found.
According to the paper published in the US weekly science, astronomers have studied the data collected by the "galaxy evolution experiment of Apache apex Observatory" project in detail and found a low-mass black hole with a mass of 3.3 times that of the sun. The experiment collected the spectra of about 100000 stars in the Milky way.
Professor Thompson said: 'we provide a new way to find black holes, but we may also find one of a new class of low-mass black holes that astronomers did not know before.'
"The mass of a celestial body can tell us about its formation, evolution and nature," he said