9/17/2016

AstronomersmighthavejustcaughtaglimpseofablackholebeingbornScienceAlert

Astronomers might have just caught a glimpse of

a black hole being born
So cool.
JOSH HRALA

14 SEP 2016

For the first time ever, a team of astronomers might have witnessed the birth of
a black hole, roughly 20 million light-years from Earth.

*T&Capply.

While researchers have long thought that black holes form when supergiant
stars collapse, new data from the Hubble Space Telescope might finally confirm
this hypothesis.

"This may be the first direct clue to how the collapse of a star can lead to the
formation of a black hole," astronomer Avi Loeb from Harvard University, who
was not a part of the new research, told Anna Nowogrodzki atNew Scientist.
The team, led by Christopher Kochanek from Ohio State University, discovered
what appears to be a newly forming black hole while going through previously
collected data from the Hubble Space Telescope, which was trained in on a red
supergiant star known as N6946-BH1.
According to Nowogrodzki, N6946-BH1 - a star roughly 25 times more massive
than our Sun - was originally observed back in 2004. Since then, Hubble has
been keeping its eye on the star's movements and activity.
After combing through that data,Kochanek'steam says they've discovered that
the star flared up in 2009, becoming about 1 million times brighter than the Sun,
before slowly fading away.
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AstronomersmighthavejustcaughtaglimpseofablackholebeingbornScienceAlert

Comparing this to new Hubble observations, which suggest that the star is no
longer emitting visible wavelength light, the team suspects that N6946-BH1
might have triggered a black hole birth.
The hypothesis is that N6946-BH1 could have collapsed in recent years, and that
bright flare-up in 2009 was the result of the star shedding off its neutrinos.

This would have caused the stars gravitational pull to drop, allowing electrons to
reattach to the hydrogen ions that float around it - a process that can eventually
result in the birth of a black hole.
If this scenario is correct, Hubble has just captured the first ever obsersations of
a black hole birth,though further investigation is needed to prove it.
To confirm the black hole birth, the team will need to discount a number of
other possibilities that could have caused thestar to flare up and disappear,
such as a merger with another star, or the chance that it's maybe being hidden
from Hubble's view by a curtain of dust.
While these are definitely possibilities,Nowogrodzki points outthata merger
with another star would cause a much brighter flare-up that wouldnt dissipate
in under a year, and if dust is to blame, the star should pop out of it eventually.
The current findings have not yet been peer-reviewed, which means for now, we
have to take them with a grain of salt.
But to speed up the investigation, the team plans on continuingtheir
observation of thestar - or potential baby black hole - with Hubble and NASAs
Chandra X-ray Observatory.
With the help of both of these high-powered telescopes, they should be able to
collect the data they need to confirm or disprove their hypothesis.
Kochanek is cautiously optimistic, telling New Scientist: "Im not quite at 'Id bet
my life on it' yet, but Im willing to go for your life."
The findings have been published on pre-print websitearXiv.org.
Black hole birth

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AstronomersmighthavejustcaughtaglimpseofablackholebeingbornScienceAlert

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