Archive.. A study reveals exciting information about black holes

 A team of researchers has discovered the closest binary star ever observed around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, suggesting that the black hole is not as destructive as previously thought. Binary star systems, in which two stars orbit each other, are common in the universe, making up 50 percent of the stars in the Milky Way. But at the center of the Milky Way, where the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* is located, there are only "fingers on one hand" of these binary stars, with only five binary systems observed so far, explained Emma Bordier, an astrophysicist at the University of Cologne in Germany, who co-authored the study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. 


 The researcher added that this region is "one of the most extreme" in the Milky Way, as "the huge gravitational influence of the supermassive black hole leads to highly eccentric and fast stellar orbits, as well as tidal forces that can disrupt and destroy potential binary systems". The discovery of the binary shows that black holes of this size are "not as destructive" as previously thought, according to a statement from the European Southern Observatory, citing Florian Biesecker of the University of Cologne, the lead author of the study. 


 The binary system, called D9, is located in a dense cluster of stars and other objects orbiting Sagittarius A, called the S-cluster. 


 On its closest pass, it was just 0.12 light-years from the black hole. 


 D9 shows "clear signs of gas and dust near the stars, suggesting that it could be a very young stellar system that formed close to the supermassive black hole," said study co-author Michal Zajacek, a researcher at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and the University of Cologne. 


 The team estimates that D9 is only 2.7 million years old, and that the gravitational pull of the black hole could have caused it to merge into a single star in just a million years.