Astronomers Discovered A Record-Breaking Massive Black Hole In Milky Way

Astronomers from the European Space Agency have discovered a massive black hole in the neighborhood of the solar system, which was once a gigantic star.

The mass of the invisible neighbor (it was named Gaia BH3) exceeds the solar one by about 33 times, which makes it the largest of all currently studied (reliably confirmed) in its “stellar” class.

The discovered black hole, named Gaia BH3, is located two thousand light years away in the constellation Aquila.

Calculations show that the star and black hole complete one orbit every 11.6 years. Spectral analysis showed that the star is metal-poor and, therefore, the black hole also formed from a giant star with low metallicity. This is the first such discovery. It is stars with low metallicity that are potentially capable of forming record-breakingly massive black holes after their death, since they do not “waste” matter as actively during their lives as stars with a high metal content.

It took a team of more than 300 scientists from all continents to confirm the discovery.