First Dormant Black Hole Discovered

By Isabelle Parker

A team of astrophysicists have discovered a dormant stellar black hole orbiting a large blue star. Scientists have described the find as a 'needle in a haystack', as dormant black holes do not consume matter and so don't release x rays, which scientists use to find them. The abysm orbits a star with a mass 25 times the mass of the sun, but does not get close enough to it to suck its matter. The void, located on the Tarantula Nebula, may also be extraordinary because of its lack of evidence of a supernova. Most stellar- mass black holes are formed when a star runs out of fuel and collapses. This is followed by a supernova that blows away the star's outer layers. Lead author and astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam, Tomer Shenar, says that, "The star that formed the black hole in VFTS 243 appears to have collapsed entirely, with no sign of a previous explosion".

Shenar states,

"This has enormous implications for the origin of black-hole mergers in the cosmos".