Gaia BH3

Source– This post on Gaia BH3 is based on the article “Astronomers spot a massive ‘sleeping giant’ black hole less than 2,000 light-years from Earth” published in “CNN” on 16th April 2024.

Why in the News?

Recently, Astronomers have discovered a massive black hole named Gaia BH3.

About Gaia BH3

1. BH3 is a dormant black hole formed from the collapse of an exploding star. It has a mass 33 times greater than our sun.

2. It is located only 2,000 light years away from Earth in the Aquila constellation.

3. Astronomers discovered the black hole while combing through observations taken by the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope for an upcoming data release to the scientific community.

4. A wobbling star orbits Gaia BH3 every 11.6 years.

5. The most massive black hole in our galaxy is Sagittarius A* which is the supermassive black hole located at the center of the Milky Way.

It has about 4 million times the mass of the sun, but that is because it’s a supermassive black hole, rather than a stellar black hole.

About supermassive black hole and stellar black hole

a) Stellar-mass black holes originate from the gravitational collapse of a single star or the combination of two neutron stars.

b) These black holes typically have masses that range from approximately three to fifty times that of sun.

c) Supermassive black holes are immensely larger, with masses starting at around 50,000 times the mass of sun and can reach up to millions or even billions of times greater.

They are invariably located at the centers of galaxies and present in nearly all galaxies.

d) The formation of supermassive black holes remains a mystery to scientists, as they are too vast to have been formed from the collapse of individual stars.

UPSC Syllabus: Science and technology (space)