Japanese astrophysicists have discovered strange movements of gas clouds near the center of the Milky Way, which may indicate the existence of a mysterious black hole.
Scientists talk about several types of black holes. There are stellar mass black holes that form as the final stage of a star's life. The largest of these black holes has a mass 62 times that of the Sun. It was formed from a merger of black holes known as GW150914.
There are also supermassive black holes. Their mass exceeds the mass of the Sun by hundreds of thousands of times.
In between these two types, there are so-called medium-mass black holes. They are the hardest to find.
A group of scientists from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, observing the gas cloud HCN-0.085-0.094 in the center of the Milky Way, came to the conclusion that it revolves around such a black hole. Its mass is 104 times the mass of the Sun. In this case, the hole itself behaves "calmly", "does not actively feed" and does not emit detectable radiation.
According to the researchers, this is another confirmation of the existence of medium-mass black holes, because so far only five such objects have been discovered. In addition, Japanese astrophysicists are confident that there may be many such black holes in the center of our galaxy.
