– Astronomers have discovered the most massive known stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy. It is called Gaia BH3.
– Gaia BH3 has a mass that is nearly 33 times that of our Sun. It is located 1,926 light-years away in the Aquila constellation.
– Astronomers found Gaia BH3 while analyzing data from the Gaia space telescope. They noticed an unusual wobble caused by Gaia BH3’s gravitational influence on a nearby companion star.
– Further observations using ground-based telescopes confirmed Gaia BH3’s large mass, making it more massive than any other known stellar black hole in the Milky Way.
– Its large mass is explained by the theory that it formed from a very massive, metal-poor star that had less mass loss over its lifetime.
– The companion star orbiting Gaia BH3 is also metal-poor, providing evidence linking high-mass black holes to metal-poor progenitor stars.
– The discovery provides new insights into how very massive stellar black holes like Gaia BH3 could have formed in the early universe from the first metal-poor generations of stars.
Source: CNN
