Published 12:13 IST, June 24th 2020
Astronomers discover 'mystery object' in mass gap that could solve Black Holes puzzle
Astronomers found object in the"mass gap", a range between heaviest known neutron star and the lightest known black hole and created gravitational waves.
Scientists have discovered a mysterious astronomical object merged with a black hole 780 million light-years away that could solve the puzzle about the black holes. The object that sits right in the "mass gap", a range between the heaviest known neutron star and the lightest known black hole and created gravitational waves which can be detected on Earth. In the study published by The American Astronomical Society in the open-access The Astrophysical Journal on June 23, astronomers revealed that the new key findings of the astronomical object could help them resolve the mystery of mystery behind the black holes.
An object, 2.6 times the mass of our sun merged with a black hole that was 23 times the mass of our sun was found in the mysterious gap, where stars had died and engulfed in the black holes. Some of the mass was blasted out as gravitational waves. The object was recorded using gravitational wave detectors deployed by The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, and Virgo were used to detect the event. The National Science Foundation's LIGO included two detectors — one in Livingston, Louisiana, and another in Hanford, Washington. The Virgo detector is located in Cascina, Italy.
The cosmic merger described in the study, an event dubbed GW190814 was going to change how scientists talk about neutron stars and black holes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and co-author Patrick Brady said.
Study’s authors Vicky Kalogera, and Daniel I. Linzer from the university of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University, said in a statement, “We've been waiting decades to solve this mystery.” "Mergers of a mixed nature — black holes and neutron stars — have been predicted for decades, but this compact object in the mass gap is a complete surprise. We are really pushing our knowledge of low-mass compact objects," Kalogera said.
"Even though we can't classify the object with conviction, we have seen either the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest known black hole. Either way, it breaks a record," said Kalogera, who is also director of Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA).
New light on a part of the universe
When the most massive stars die, they collapse under their own gravity and leave behind black holes; when stars that are a bit less massive die, they explode in supernovas and leave behind dense, dead remnants of stars called neutron stars. For decades, astronomers have been puzzled by a gap that lies between neutron stars and black holes, the California University of Technology wrote in a report. Further, it mentioned, that the ripples from gravitational waves detected back on Earth by LIGO and Virgo in August 2019.
The executive director of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech, David Reitze said, “Discoveries such as this are puzzles, and force us to scratch our heads a bit.” He added, “Discerning the true nature of this 'mass gap' object will require more observations, but those observations will undoubtedly shine new light on a part of the universe that has previously been inaccessible to us."
Updated 12:13 IST, June 24th 2020