Millions Of Undiscovered Black Holes Are Hiding In The Milky Way?

Millions Of Undiscovered Black Holes Are Hiding In The Milky Way, Claim Researchers

Natasha Mathur

Research titled “Radio Emission from Accreting Isolated Black Holes in Our Galaxy” states that apart from a few tens of “stellar-mass black holes” that have been discovered in the Binary System, an order of 10^8 isolated black holes (IBHs) lurk in our Galaxy. As a part of the research, study of electron acceleration generated by the shock that forms between the outflow, the surrounding material, and the subsequent radio synchrotron thats emitted from accelerated electrons was also carried out.

A numerical calculation of the orbits of IBHs was done to obtain the overall spatial and velocity distributions. Scientists also estimated the number of IBHs detectable with the help of surveys that use SKA1-mid (SKA2) as ∼ 30 (∼ 700). These parallel measurements made by SKA indicated towards the distances of these blackholes, shedding light on the properties of these black holes in our Galaxy.

Researchers state that these observations have further given them important insight surrounding the properties (e.g. mass, spin) of these black holes and how they have helped with the stellar evolution and accretion disc theory. Moreover, it also points towards how these stellar-mass black holes in the Galaxy are all binaries and that there exists a large population of isolated black holes (IBHs) without any companion star. Now although past studies show that the number of black holes formed in the history of the galaxy is of 10^8, fraction of IBH among these is negligible.