![]() ![]() No need for us to worry because the black hole is 5,000 light-years away. The black hole's powerful gravitation left a unique fingerprint on the deflection of starlight, eliminating other potential gravitational lensing candidates. This was a long and painstaking measurement that the Hubble Space Telescope's exquisite resolution is well-suited for. The light from a star far behind the black hole was momentarily brightened and deflected by the black hole passing in front of it. Now, astronomers have at last come up with clear evidence for finding one in a needle-in-a-haystack search among a blizzard of stars seen toward the galactic center. But since black holes emit no light of their own, they are extremely difficult to detect. And this is how the phantom black holes are found.Īstronomers estimate that there should be 100 million black holes roaming among the 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Starlight passing near this gravitational pothole in space is deflected. The intense gravity from something so dense warps the fabric of space around it, like a bowling ball rolling across the skin of a trampoline. The black hole is typically several times the mass of our Sun. That only begins to describe the infinite density locked away into a black hole left over from a stellar explosion. Imagine crushing the mass of a fleet of battleships into something no bigger than a baseball. Like legendary wandering ghosts, their presence can only be deduced by seeing how they affect the environment around them. These black holes cannot be directly seen because their intense gravity swallows light. The vast gulf of space between the stars is plied by the dead, burned-out and crushed remnants of once glorious stars. Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's Achievements.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate. ![]()
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