A Milky Way black hole 100,000 times the size of the sun right now is taking a huge bite out of our galaxy, Japanese astronomers discovered while looking for something else. Then they added Monday's find to the list of about 60 other known black hole "candidates."
Time said the astonomers stumbled on the discovery while exploring a “peculiar” molecular cloud near the center of the galaxy.
Further studies showed that, near the center of the cloud, a clump of gas appeared to be drawn by gravitational forces.
This is the first hint that a black hole could be present, as scientists are unable to see black holes, which do not emit light.
Instead, researchers look to possible influences on nearby objects or disruptions in gravitation to detect these occurrences and, based upon observations of the cloud of molecular gas, scientists believe the most likely cause of these particular gravitational disruptions could be the existence of a black hole.
“This is the second-largest black hole candidate in the Milky Way galaxy,” lead researcher Tomoharu Oka noted in a Nature Astronomy report that was published on Monday.
Studies have suggested there could be between 100 million to 1 billion black holes in the Milky Way alone, but only about 60 have been identified.
“Further detection of such compact high-velocity features in various environments may increase the number of non-luminous black hole candidate and thereby increase targets to search for evidential proof of general relativity,” Oka said.
“This would make a considerable contribution to the progress of modern physics.”
Astronomer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Kevin Schawinski, told Science “we know very little about how black holes form but if Oka’s team or others are able to find a population of such objects, we can put our ideas to the test.”