Astronomers Just Found Double Trouble Close To Our Galaxy’s Black Hole

by · Forbes
This image indicates the location of the newly discovered binary star D9, which is orbiting ... [+] Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first star pair ever found near a supermassive black hole. The cut-out shows  the binary system as detected by the SINFONI spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. While the two stars cannot be discerned separately in this image, the binary nature of D9 was revealed by the spectra captured over several years.ESO/F. Peißker et al., S. Guisa

Everywhere we look for planets, we find them. Over 5,000 have been found orbiting all kinds of stars across our Milky Way galaxy, with one exception — its center.

The area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way — called Sagittarius A* — appears to be devoid of planets and some kinds of stars. However, the densest, brightest area of the galaxy is not the easiest place to look for dim planets and strange stars.

Extreme Gravity

A new paper published today in Nature Communications reveals something unexpected — a binary star system close to Sagittarius A*. It's surprising because it was thought that the gravitational forces around a black hole were too extreme for such a star system to survive.

Binary star systems are not rare. They account for about a third of the star systems in the Milky Way. The discovery — made from 15 years of data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile — could make it much easier for astronomers to find planets close to Sagittarius A*.

D9 is the first star pair ever found near Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre ... [+] of the Milky Way.ESO/F. Peißker et al.

Brief Window

It may be that binary stars close to black holes can exist only briefly in the context of cosmic time. The newly discovered binary star, called D9, is thought to be a mere 2.7 million years old. Since stars can survive for billions of years, this star system is a virtual newborn. Could the intense gravitational force of Sagittarius A* cause it to merge into a single star? Probably, think astronomers, most likely within just a million years. That makes D9 an extraordinary find. “

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This provides only a brief window on cosmic timescales to observe such a binary system,” said Emma Bordier, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, a former ESO student, and the paper's co-author.

Gas And Dust

“The D9 system shows clear signs of the presence of gas and dust around the stars, which suggests that it could be a very young stellar system that must have formed in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole,” said Michal Zajaček, a researcher at Masaryk University, Czechia, and the University of Cologne, and the paper's co-author.

Although several young stars have been found close to Sagittarius A* before now, this new knowledge that some binary star systems can briefly thrive, even under destructive extreme gravity, has consequences. “Black holes are not as destructive as we thought,” said Florian Peißker, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, and lead author of the study.

Planet-Spotting

The detection of D9 — the first binary star system close to a supermassive black hole — suggests that planets may be close to our galaxy's black hole. “Our discovery lets us speculate about the presence of planets since these are often formed around young stars," said Peißker. "It seems plausible that the detection of planets in the Galactic center is just a matter of time.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.