Millions of black holes hiding in our galaxy: Study

In space, there are millions of celestial bodies including asteroids, meteors, comets, black holes and UFOs about which we really don’t know much. It can be only said that these celestial bodies can harm the Earth and the whole galaxy as well. Talking specifically about black holes, it is a region of space-time exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it. In the space, black holes are one of the most complex entities. Recently, News Nation apprised you with the supermassive black hole named V616 Monocerotis, which is the closest to our Earth at a distance of just 3,300 light-years away. It is worth mentioning here that supermassive black holes like V616 are monstrous wells of gravity, typically found at the dead centre of galaxies. And now, a study by Japanese astrophysicists that there could be up to 100 million black holes hiding throughout the Milky Way.

Yes, you read it right. The astrophysicists presented the shocking claim in a study, pre-published on the archiving website Arxiv. The Japanese researchers assume that the Milky Way is heavily populated with a particular type of black hole that is incredibly hard to detect.

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“Apart from the few tens of stellar-mass black holes discovered in binary systems, an order of 100,000,000 isolated black holes are believed to be lurking in our Galaxy,” they wrote in their study.

“Although some IBHs are able to accrete matter from the interstellar medium, the accretion flow is usually weak and thus radiatively inefficient, which results in significant material outflow. We study electron acceleration generated by the shock formed between this outflow and the surrounding material, and the subsequent radio synchrotron emission from accelerated electrons,” They added.

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"Interesting paper," said Simon Portegies Zwart, an astrophysicist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who was not involved in Tsuna and Kawanaka's research. Portegies Zwart has also studied the question of IBHs, also known as intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs).

"It would be a great way to find IMBHs," Portegies Zwart told Live Science. "I think that with LOFAR , such research should already be possible, but the sensitivity may pose a problem."

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