Astronomers studying the center of the Milky Way Galaxy have made a surprising discovery – a pair of young stars orbiting each other near the supermassive black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A*. The finding was published in Nature Communications and has left scientists stunned.
The discovery was made using data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, which observed a warble in wavelength of starlight caused by the binary system. The team found that one object’s emission line shifted slightly at different times, indicating the presence of a pair of stars.
Using models of newly formed stars with dusty shrouds, the researchers concluded that the binary system consists of a 2.7 million-year-old star with 2.8 times the mass of our Sun and a companion star of just 0.7 solar masses. This is unusual because theorists have predicted that binaries near supermassive black holes would not last long.
The discovery has sparked debate among scientists, with some suggesting that G objects, which appear to be clumps of dust and gas, could be products of recent binary mergers. Others propose that they are short-lived clumps of gas and dust formed by the collision of stellar winds from neighboring stars.
However, the finding also raises questions about the young stars in the S-cluster, a group of stars surrounding the black hole. Many of its members are old stars, while others are young, with no clear explanation for their presence.
The discovery of D9, as it has been named, could provide answers to several mysteries surrounding the S-cluster, including the origin of G objects and the young stars in the cluster. As astrophysicist Tuan Do said, “This object has the potential to tell us a lot about this region.”
Source: https://www.science.org/content/article/young-double-star-system-discovered-near-our-galaxy-s-giant-black-hole