The closest black hole to Earth is actually… a “vampire” system

The closest black hole to Earth is actually… a “vampire” system
In 2020, a team led by astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reported the closest black hole to Earth, located just 1,000 light-years away, in the HR 6819 system. The challenge was raised by other researchers, including an international team based at KU Leuven. , Belgium. In an article published today, these two teams joined forces to report that’s not really the case. black hole (In astronomy, a black hole is a massive object whose gravitational field is so intense…) In the HR 6819 system, which is more of a two-star “vampire” system state (The word step can have many meanings, it is used in many fields and…) Rare and short-lived in its development.

The original HR 6819 study received considerable press and scientific attention. Thomas Rivinius, astronomer (An astronomer is a scientist who specializes in the study of astronomy.) ESO, based in Chile and the lead author of this article, was not surprised by the reception extended by the community of astronomers to the discovery of black holes. “Not only is this normal, but it should be common for results to be reviewed,” he said, “and a result that garners even more headlines.”

Thomas Rivinius and his colleagues were convinced that the best explanation for statistics (In information technology (IT), data is an introductory description, often…) He had received with Telescope (A telescope, (from Greek tele meaning “far” and skopin meaning …) MPG/ESO of 2.2 m, was that the HR 6819 was a triple system, with a Star (A star is an autonomously light-emitting celestial body, similar to a …) In To revolve around (In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the trajectory drawn by a body in space…) Around (Autore is the name that gives the French avian nomenclature (update)…) every 40. of a black hole Day (Day or day is the interval that separates sunrise from sunset; that is…) And another star in a much wider orbit. But a study led by Julia Bodensteiner, a doctoral student at KU Leuven in Belgium, offered an explanation. Diverse (In mathematics, fractions are defined in algebraic theory…) For the same data: HR 6819 could also be a system with only two stars in a 40-day orbit and without a black hole All (Understanding as the whole of all that exists is often interpreted as the world or …), This alternate scenario would require one of the stars to be “stripped”, meaning that at some point a large part of it is lost. Mass (The word mass is used to designate two quantities linked by one…) For the benefit of the other star.

“We had reached the limit of existing data, so we had to turn to a. strategy (Strategy – from Greek stratos meaning “army” and age meaning …) OfOverview (Observation is the act of attentive follow-up of events, without the desire to observe them…) different to decide between the two scenarios proposed by the two teams”, explains Abigailly. frost (names of villages)A researcher at KU Leuven, who led the new study published today in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Both the teams worked to solve the mystery Together (In set theory, a set intuitively designates a collection…) To get new, more accurate data from HR 6819 very large telescope (The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a set of 4 main telescopes and 4 auxiliary…) (VLT) and ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). “VLTI was the only facility that was able to provide the critical data we needed need (Requirements are at the level of interaction between the individual and the environment. It is…) To differentiate between the two explanations, “says Dietrich Baade, author of the original HR 6819 study and the new astronomy and astrophysics paper. “As there was no Senses (Sense (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) is a scientific project aimed at…) To request the same observation twice, we joined forces with the KU Leuven team.” This joint effort allowed the teams to pool their resources and knowledge to ascertain the true nature of the system. .

“The scenarios we were looking for were quite clear, very different and easily identifiable with the right equipment,” explains Thomas Rivinius. “We agreed that there were two sources of Light (Light is the set of electromagnetic waves visible to the eye…) system, so the question was whether they orbit each other very closely, as in the bare star scenario, or if they are very far apart, as in the black hole scenario.”

To differentiate between the two resolutions, astronomers used VLTI’s Gravity instrument and ESO’s VLT Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument.

“MUSE confirmed that the broad orbit had no bright companion, while Gravity’s high spatial resolution resolved two bright sources that were only about a third of the distance between Earth (Earth is the third planet in the solar system in order of distance…) And this Sunday (The Sun (Sol in Latin, Helios or in Greek) is the star…)“, Abigail Frost says. “These data turned out to be the final piece of the puzzle, and allowed us to conclude that HR 6819 is a binary system (The binary system is a number system that uses base 2. We call…) without black holes.

“Our best explanation so far is that we observed this binary system shortly after one of the stars suckedAtmosphere (The word atmosphere can have many meanings 🙂 of his partner stellar (Stellaria is a genus of herbaceous annual or perennial plants, chickweed, …), This is a common phenomenon in nearby binary systems, sometimes referred to in the press as ‘stellar vampirism,'” says Julia Bodensteiner, currently at ESO in Germany and author of the new study. Some part of it was snatched from the donor. Case (Matter is the substance that makes up any body with tangible reality. Its…)The receiving star began to spin rapidly”.

“It is extremely difficult to observe such a post-interaction phase because it is so short,” says Abigail Frost. “This makes our findings for HR 6819 very exciting, as it presents an ideal candidate to study how this vampire affects the evolution of massive stars, and in turn the formation of their associated events.” affects, including Wave’s (A wave is the propagation of a disturbance that produces a reversible change in its path…) Gravity and violent explosions supernova (A supernova is a group of events resulting from an explosion…),

The newly formed joint Leuven-ESO team now plans to more closely monitor HR 6819 using VLTI’s Gravity instrument. Researchers will conduct a joint study of the system Time (Time is a concept developed by man to hold on to…)To use this knowledge to better understand its evolution, to limit its properties, and to learn more about other binary systems.

About this Research (Scientific research refers to all the work done in the first place…) Regarding black holes, the team remains optimistic. “Stellar-mass black holes remain very elusive because of their very nature,” says Thomas Rivinius. “But estimates on the order of magnitude suggest that Earth alone has tens or hundreds of millions of black holes. Galaxy (The Milky Way (also called “our galaxy”, or sometimes…)“, says Dietrich Baade. It is only a matter of time before astronomers find them.

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