Hey space explorers! 🌌 Did you know that scientists in China have made an amazing discovery about black holes? They found a runaway star that’s zooming through space at incredible speed! 🚀
This star, named J0731+3717 (we can call it J0731 for short), was thrown out of a massive star cluster called M15 about 20 million years ago. That’s like getting kicked out of a cosmic party! 🎉
But here’s the super cool part: this runaway star is helping scientists find something mysterious called intermediate-mass black holes. 🕳️
So, what’s a black hole? It’s a place in space where gravity is so strong that even light can’t escape! 🌠 There are small black holes formed when big stars collapse, and super big ones at the centers of galaxies called supermassive black holes. But scientists have been looking for black holes that are in between these sizes.
The runaway star J0731 is going so fast—about 550 kilometers per second! That’s like racing around the Earth more than 13 times in just one second! 🌍💨
How did it get so fast? Well, scientists think that J0731 was part of a pair of stars that got too close to an intermediate-mass black hole in M15. The black hole’s immense gravity pulled one star in and slingshotted the other star away at high speed! This is called the Hills mechanism. 🎢
Finding J0731 helps prove that intermediate-mass black holes really exist. It’s like finding a missing piece of a giant space puzzle! 🧩
The researchers are excited because they think they’ll find more runaway stars like J0731. Each one can teach us more about these mysterious black holes and how they grow into supermassive black holes. Stay tuned for more cosmic discoveries! 🌟
Reference(s):
Chinese scientists find proof of intermediate-mass black holes
cgtn.com
