Scientists Confirm Existence of Wandering Black Hole

Scientists have managed to confirm the existence of a unique black hole that freely roams the expanses of the Galaxy. Without satellites and without its own radiation, it hid from observers for a long time, revealing itself only through subtle distortions of light from distant stars. This discovery was an important step in the study of lonely space objects.

Fourteen years passed from the time the object was first observed in 2011 until the final results were published in The Astrophysical Journal. To confirm the discovery, the researchers looked at archive data from 16 telescopes and observed the object for six years using the Hubble Space Telescope. In the early stages, there was a possibility that the object could be a neutron star, as invisible in the optical range as a black hole. However, after lengthy studies, it was established that this is indeed the first recorded solitary black hole of stellar mass. According to the final data, the black hole is moving through the Milky Way at a speed of about 51 km/s, its mass is about 7.15 solar masses, and the distance to it is about 4958 light years. And most importantly, it is absolutely alone, which, according to scientists, is an extremely rare phenomenon.

Although this was the first single black hole to be directly detected, experts believe that there may be many such wanderers in the Universe – and only a small fraction of them can be caught using current methods.