Black hole in the Milky Way might be sending mysterious radio signals

A middle-sized black hole in the middle of one of the brightest globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy may be emitting mysterious radio signals.

According to a study published inThe Astrophysical Journal,a medium-sized black hole or a pulsar, a fast-spinning neutron star, might be emitting radio signals. If it is a black hole, it would be a first-of-its-kind discovery. Scientists found the radio signal while scanning the 47 Tucanae cluster with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) in New South Wales,Space.com reported.

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Ancient groupings of stars scattered around the Milky Way galaxy, or globular clusters, are densely packed with stars more than other regions of the galaxy. In the case of 27 Tucanae, there are over one million stars in a sphere with 120 lightyears diameter and can be observed with the naked eye.

Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) created the most detailed image of 47 Tucanae with 450 hours of radio measurements with ATCA. They found an unusual radio wave source in the centre, around 14,500 lightyears from the Sun. They believe that a middle-sized black hole or a pulsar might be producing it.

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"If this signal turns out to be a black hole, it would be a highly significant discovery and the first-ever radio detection of one inside a cluster," said Alessandro Paduano, lead author of the study and a former PhD student at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. He added, "While intermediate-mass black holes are thought to exist in globular clusters, there hasn't been a clear detection of one yet."

Supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies can be as gigantic as millions, or even billions, of suns. Medium-sized black holes are the missing connection between stellar black holes, left over from the deaths of giant stars and supermassive black holes.

Tim Galvin, a research scientist at CSIRO and co-author of a paper on the study, said, "This project has stretched our software to its limits in terms of both data management and processing, and it has been really exciting to see the wealth of science that these techniques have enabled."

Arash Bahramian, an astronomer at Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy who oversaw the project, added, "It gives us a glimpse of the exciting capabilities the next generation of radio telescopes will achieve when they come online."

(With inputs from agencies)