Space: First dormant black hole outside the Milky Way spotted by the ‘black hole police’

Paper co-author and astrophysicist Dr Julia Bodensteiner, of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), said: “For more than two years now, we have been looking for such black hole–binary systems.

“I was very excited when I heard about VFTS 243, which in my opinion is the most convincing candidate reported to date.”

The team explained that VFTS 243 — which lies in a neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud — is at least nine times the mass of the Sun, and orbits a hot, blue star that itself weighs some 25 solar masses.

It was located thanks to six year’s worth of observations taken by the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

The researchers searched nearly 1,000 massive stars in the Tarantula Nebula region of the Large Magellanic Cloud in search of one that could have a dormant black hole — rather than another type of object — as a companion.

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Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1643050/space-first-dormant-black-hole-outside-milky-way-spotted-by-black-hole-police