A wandering black hole bends space-time, creating an illusion across the galaxy

For the first time, scientists have identified a black hole that wanders across the galaxy containing Earth.

According to Science Alert, the object was found from a mysterious astronomical event called MOA-11-191/OGLE-11-0462, which was discovered by two separate surveys called the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) and Microlensing observations in astrophysics (MOA).

It has just been identified as a black hole, currently wandering in space 5,200 light-years from Earth.

Event MOA-11-191/OGLE-11-0462 through 8 Hubble observations

The international study led by Dr Kailash Sahu from the Institute of Space Telescope Science says this is the first time a wandering black hole has been captured, although calculations suggest there are between 10 million and 1 billion. something like that, with the mass of a giant star, is drifting across the galaxy containing the Earth the Milky Way (the Milky Way).

But we can't see them, because the black hole is completely dark. MOA-11-191/OGLE-11-0462 was discovered indirectly through the illusions it was spreading.

This black hole's gravitational field bends space-time around, thereby warping and twisting whatever light passes through it. While observing a number of stars, scientists discovered something invisible that was magnifying and bending starlight: the black hole they were looking for.

Before that, the black hole was known by only two surveys as an unknown object, moving in the Milky Way at 45 km/s, indicated by the MOA-11 starlight magnification event. -191/OGLE-11-0462 appeared from June 2 and peaked on July 20, 2011, lasted for 270 days with unusually high levels.

Collating different possibilities and data from eight Hubble Space Telescope observations, they found that only a black hole responded to all the signals.

This wandering black hole weighs about 7.1 times the mass of the Sun and has a diameter of about 42km.