Signs of Second Largest Black Hole in the Milky Way; Possible Missing Link in Black Hole Evolution
A team of astronomers led by Tomoharu Oka, a professor at Keio University in Japan, has found an enigmatic gas cloud, called CO-0.40-0.22, only 200 light years away from the center of the Milky Way. What makes CO-0.40-0.22 unusual is its surprisingly wide velocity dispersion: the cloud contains gas with a very wide range of speeds. The team found this mysterious feature with two radio telescopes, the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope in Japan and the ASTE Telescope in Chile, both operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
What makes this velocity dispersion so wide? There are no holes inside of the cloud. Also, X-ray and infrared observations did not find any compact objects. These features indicate that the velocity dispersion is not caused by a local energy input, such as supernova explosions.
The team performed a simple simulation of gas clouds flung by a strong gravity source. In the simulation, the gas clouds are first attracted by the source and their speeds increase as they approach it, reaching maximum at the closest point to the object. After that the clouds continue past the object and their speeds decrease. The team found that a model using a gravity source with 100 thousand times the mass of the Sun inside an area with a radius of 0.3 light years provided the best fit to the observed data. “Considering the fact that no compact objects are seen in X-ray or infrared observations,” Oka, the lead author of the paper that appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, explains “as far as we know, the best candidate for the compact massive object is a black hole.”
If that is the case, this is the first detection of an intermediate mass black hole. Astronomers already know about two sizes of black holes: stellar-mass black holes, formed after the gigantic explosions of very massive stars; and supermassive black holes (SMBH) often found at the centers of galaxies. The mass of SMBH ranges from several million to billions of times the mass of the Sun. A number of SMBHs have been found, but no one knows how the SMBHs are formed.
(Left) The center of the Milky Way can be seen in the 115 and 346 GHz emission lines of carbon monoxide (CO). The white regions show the condensation of dense, warm gas. (Upper Right) Close-up intensity map around CO-0.40-0.22 seen in the 355 GHz emission line of HCN molecules. The ellipses indicate shell structures in the gas near C0-0.40-0.22. (Lower Right) Velocity dispersion diagram taken along the dotted line shown above. The wide velocity dispersion of 100 km/s in CO-0.40-0.22 stands out.
Credit: Tomoharu Oka (Keio University), NAOJ
These results open a new way to search for black holes with radio telescopes. Recent observations have revealed that there are a number of wide-velocity-dispersion compact clouds similar to CO-0.40-0.22. The team proposes that some of those clouds might contain black holes. A study suggested that there are 100 million black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy, but X-ray observations have only found dozens so far.
Masaaki Hiramatsu
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2016/01/signs-of-second-largest-black-hole-in.html
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