Devil's star: New cosmic object shakes the scientific world

A ghost star refers to a new, strange, small but extremely massive object that scientists can't yet be sure of, blocking the light from a distant star from reaching Earth.

According to SciTech Daily, the "ghost star" happened to be recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and studied by scientists from the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) - USA.

Measurements revealed it to be an unusually compact but massive object, with an estimated mass between 1.6 and 4.4 million Suns. What it is, there are many theories, many controversies, and no one has been able to confirm the answer despite understanding the basic properties of objects.

Graphic depicting "devil star"

Dubbed OB110462, the "ghost star" is most likely a black hole or a neutron star - two remnants of massive dead stars, but unusual compared to other stellar "zombie". .

However, whether it's a black hole or a neutron star, this object is still the remnant of the first dark star - a "stellar specter" - discovered wandering the galaxy without pairing with another globular star.

Associate Professor Jessica Lu, one of the two leading members of the research team, expressed her expectation: "This is the first free-floating black hole or neutron star detected using the gravitational microlensing method. With microlensing, we are can probe these lonely, compact objects and weigh them. I think we've opened a new window into these dark objects."

Gravitational microlensing is a method of observation based on the optical effect, which was founded in 1936 by Albert Einstein using his Theory of General Relativity: When a star in the sky passes in front of the star. otherwise, the rays of the rear star will be bent due to the gravitational "gravity" of the foreground star.

However, it was not until recently that scientists succeeded in translating theories into effective methods of observation.,

Determining how often these "ghost stars" reside in the Earth-containing Milky Way will help astronomers understand more about the evolution of stars, especially how they die. They also expect that some ghost stars are actually primordial black holes, which were produced in large quantities during the Big Bang.