The Unicorn Black Hole – The findings of a recently concluded study has revealed the smallest known black hole that also happens to be the closest black hole to Earth to date. This newly discovered black hole dubbed as “The Unicorn” belongs to our Milky Way galaxy. “The Unicorn” black hole possesses mass 3 times that of the Sun. The research was conducted by scientists from Ohio State University and was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on April 21, 2021.
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Why it is known as “The Unicorn Black Hole”?
A luminous star known as the red giant orbits with the Unicorn black hole in what commonly designated as the binary star system named V723 Mon. The reason why it is called “the Unicorn” lies in the fact that V723 Mon belongs to the Monoceros constellation. Mythologically, Monoceros means single-horned beast, the unicorn, per se.
The close is still far!
As we know that the closest star to our solar system (distance is measured from the center that is the Sun) is Proxima Centauri which is about 4 light-years away. The black hole named The Unicorn is farther from this distance, approximately it is 1,500 light-years from Earth.
Approximately, 1 light year = 9.46 trillion kilometers
Visually The Unicorn doesn’t exist!
We all know that the black hole has an enormous gravitational pull that even light can not escape from its grip. As a black hole doesn’t reflect any light it behaves like an ideal black body. The only way to identify the presence of the black hole is to find out the gravitational distortion in the region. In this case, the confirmation of the black hole was done upon studying the nearby star – the red giant, whose shape was uneven. To study the star the data was already available and was unanalyzed. The telescope system comprised of three units, namely – Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT), Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and the All Sky Automated Survey (TSAS).
Upon studying the data from the telescope system a tidal distortion was detected by the astronomers in the red giant signaling the presence of a black hole. This phenomenon is alike the moon’s gravity causes tides in the seas of the Earth creating a bulge. Earlier scientists couldn’t believe the existence of such a low mass black hole. The inspiration for this research came from a study published in the journal Science on Oct 31, 2019, that advised a whole new class of black holes that falls between the ‘mass gap’ of earlier known black holes. To conclude The Unicorn black hole mass as three solar masses, the velocity of the red giant, the star’s period of orbit, and tidal force was studied.
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Way Foward to The Unicorn black hole
The method used in the discovery of The Unicorn black hole will be used to detect other black holes from a similar class. The study of black holes is important to understand the life cycle of stars. The main barrier to the study is the detection of a black hole because these supermassive bodies are electromagnetically black and no rays emerge from them. To detect the black hole scientist always look for distortion in a region and the rays which arise due to this interaction (X-rays) are studied paving the path of discovery of black holes. A lot of investigation is needed to find and classify the black holes easily from low-mass, intermediate-mass, and a high-mass class of black holes.
Unicorn Black Hole FAQs
The size of the smallest known black hole the Unicorn is about 3 solar masses.
Scientists from the The Ohio State University discovered this black hole.
The real image of the black hole unicorn is not available but the graphical image can be checked in the article.
The unicorn is located near a red giant star called V723 Mon in the constellation of Monoceros.
The closest black hole, the unicorn, is located just 1,500 light-years away from the Earth.