The Hubble Telescope identifies the rarest object in the universe
2 min readUsing the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered new evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole, considered the rarest object in the universe. The star is found in the globular cluster Messier 4, 6,000 light-years from Earth. The discovery was published in outlet ESA Hubbleon Tuesday the 23rd.
The rarity of this cosmic body is due to the fact that, to date, no black hole has been reliably recorded as one of intermediate mass. These objects weigh about 100,000 times the mass of the sun, and the newly discovered object weighs about 800 solar masses.
“Using the latest Gaia and Hubble data, it was not possible to distinguish a dark cluster of remnant stars from a single, larger point source,” said principal investigator Eduardo Vitral of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “So one possible theory is that rather than being a collection of small, separate dark objects, this dark mass could be an intermediate-sized black hole.”
Other “candidates” for the rarest thing in the universe
According to the ESA Hubble portal, astronomers have detected possible medium-mass black holes, such as 3XMM J215022.4-055108, in 2020, and HLX-1, found in 2009, located in dense clusters of stars at the edge of other galaxies. .
Each filter has a mass of several tens of thousands of solar masses. Intermediate mass black holes are detected indirectly, for example, by the circular motion of stars in certain regions where there is no visible center.
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