A new study conducted by a team of astronomers has found evidence of thousands of black holes near the center of the Milky Way. Astronomers who took part in this study made this conclusion after analyzing data from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory.
After making this mindblowing discovery, NASA researchers revealed that this black hole cluster consists of stellar-mass black holes that weigh between five to 30 times the mass of the sun in the solar system.
More Details About These Black Holes
Scientists, during this study, found that these black holes were discovered within three light-years of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that is located at the center of the Milky Way.
"Theoretical studies of the dynamics of stars in galaxies have indicated that a large population of stellar-mass black holes — as many as 20,000 — could drift inward over the eons and collect around Sgr A*. This recent analysis using Chandra data is the first observational evidence for such a black hole bounty," NASA wrote on their website.
NASA also revealed that Chandra X-ray data also sheds light on X-ray binaries, which are basically black holes or neutron stars locked in close orbit with a star that will pull gas from its companion.
"A black hole by itself is invisible. However, a black hole — or neutron star — locked in close orbit with a star will pull gas from its companion (astronomers call these systems "X-ray binaries"). This material falls into a disk and heats up to millions of degrees and produces X-rays before disappearing into the black hole. Some of these X-ray binaries appear as point-like sources in the Chandra image," added NASA.
Is Time Travel Possible Through Black Holes?
A few months back, an Indian researcher named Atharva Palshetkar of the CTES College Mumbai had claimed that black holes could theoretically help humans to travel across time. According to this hypothesis, if someone gets nearer to a black hole, time will be normal for that person, but for other observers outside, thousands of years would have been passed.
"Meanwhile, while you enter the black hole everything you see outside will begin to speed up outside. Your family, kids, grandkids, hundreds of generations will rise and fall in just matters of minutes and hours," Palshetkar said.
