Help astronomers discover millions of stellar black holes hidden in the Milky Way!

Stephen Hawking, James Hartle, and Alexei Starobinsky are no longer with us, nor is John Wheeler, but there are other great pioneers of black hole theory! Like Roger Penrose and Kip Thorne. It is often said that it was the work of Robert Oppenheimer that laid the foundations for the theory of black holes, but we can return to the work of Robert Oppenheimer. Subramanian Chandrasekhar Who was the first to understand that after a certain mass, a star that has exhausted its thermonuclear fuel must collapse by gravity, forming what we now call a black hole.

Today, the fascination with these compact stars that distort time and space, which still contain many mysteries and may sometimes be doors to parallel universes, has been fueled in particular by Interstellar and the image of the black hole M87* revealed by the collaborationEvent horizon telescope. So many people would undoubtedly like to take part in one of the greatest adventures of the Noh realm Geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky And the geologist and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the collective spirit in a way Homo sapiensAnd help uncover the secrets of black holes. But they also probably think that this possibility is reserved for astrophysicists.

However, as Arthur Clarke predicted in the 1960s, while the program was broadcast BBCNot only have advances in communications and computing helped the field develop a planetary consciousness and culture, but the growth over 30 years of the Internet also allows anyone with a computer to help the scientific community make discoveries, without any scientific training. . It was already possible to help astrophysicists discover supermassive black holes at the heart of large galaxies by connecting to the Internet Radio Galaxy Zoo As part of the famous Zoneverse. This well-known citizen science portal is an extension of the original project Galaxy Zoo Which invited Internet users to classify galaxies.

Some time ago, it became possible for anyone to hunt stellar black holes in the Milky Way using another avatar of Zoneverse : Black hole hunters.

Subramanian Chandrasekhar And black holes. For a fairly accurate French translation, click on the white rectangle at the bottom right. The English translation should appear next. Then click on the nut to the right of the rectangle, then on “Translations” and finally on “Translate automatically.” Select “French”. © OpenLearn from the Open University

Wandering or isolated stellar black holes

What is it about?

We know that the majority of stars in the Milky Way are double stars, often containing at least one massive star that will end its short life in a supernova. If one of these stars is particularly massive, it will likely leave a black hole as a stellar corpse rather than a neutron star.

The resulting explosion could dislodge the binary system, creating a wandering stellar black hole. It is also possible that the orbits have been modified or that the black hole, although still gravitationally bound to the other star still on the famous main sequence, is too far away to tear material from the companion star.

In this case, an accretion disk does not form around the black hole as the spins of matter heat up to the point of radiation in the This is an imaginary membrane under which any falling matter is hopelessly trapped according to the theory of general relativity, because it must exceed the speed of light to escape the bubble defined by the horizon.

It may seem that a wandering black hole or a black hole without an accretion disk is destined to escape the eyes of the Nu Sphere forever and the eyes of all hunters (hunters, In English) of black holes.

This animation demonstrates the concept of black hole gravitational microlensing. When a black hole appears to pass almost in front of a background star, light rays from the source star are bent by the distortion of space-time around the foreground black hole. This turns into a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the distant background star. Unlike the case in which a star or planet is the lensed object, black holes distort space-time to such an extent that they noticeably change the apparent position of the distant star in the sky. © NASA

Crossing black holes with gravitational microlensing

But this is not true.

In fact, although the event is rare and requires observing the largest possible area of ​​the sky for a long period, it is possible for an observer for an observer of this type to pass in front of a star. Due to the black hole's strong gravitational field, light rays are deflected like a lens.

Therefore, the transiting star becomes transiently brighter, and then its light intensity curve has a peak, and this peak is produced by the so-called microgravitational lensing effect that researchers discovered Matt Middleton and Adam McMaster from the University of Southampton, and their colleague Dr Hugh Dickinson from the Open University (a public and open university located in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969) gives Internet users the opportunity to search the light curves recorded in research expeditions, which were initially aimed at detecting planetary transits.

So, for a while, Black Hole Hunters offered to mine SuperWASP data (Wide angle planet searching“Wide-angle Planet Search”), an exoplanet search project carried out from 2004 to 2016 using ground-based telescopes at two observatory sites: the Roque de los Mochachos Observatory and the South African Astronomical Observatory.

But today, this is data from Transit of the exoplanet survey satellite Tess, now a famous exoplanet hunter, can use it.

Despite advances in artificial intelligence, these issues still persist Homo sapiens Which can effectively get rid of micro lens effects in light curves. Also, while this is still the case, feel free to convert yourself to Black hole hunter Follow the instructions that are easy to put into practice!