In a big discovery, scientists have found a huge black hole in our Milky Way galaxy. It's being called a "sleeping giant" because it's so massive and hidden.
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This black hole is in the constellation Aquila, not too far from Earth, just about 2,000 light-years away. It's a whopping 33 times heavier than our Sun. What's special about this find is that it's the largest black hole of its kind found in our galaxy.
Normally, we find these massive black holes in faraway galaxies, not close to home like this one. This discovery is challenging what we thought we knew about how really big stars form and grow.
Black holes are strange places where gravity is incredibly strong. They're like cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking in everything, even light. Usually, when scientists find black holes, they're gobbling up material from nearby stars, which makes them shine with X-rays.
But sometimes, black holes don't have any nearby stars to snack on. So, they're in stealth mode, not giving off any light at all. Astronomers call these ones "dormant."
To find these sneaky black holes, scientists study the movements of billions of stars, looking for anything unusual. They spotted an old giant star in Aquila that seemed to be dancing in an odd way. After some careful investigation, they realized it was circling around a dormant black hole, and not just any black hole, but one that's really, really massive. This is the third dormant black hole found using the Gaia space observatory, and they're calling it "Gaia BH3."
This exciting discovery has been shared in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal. It's a reminder that even in our own backyard, there are still plenty of secrets waiting to be uncovered in the vastness of space.
