A pending sky survey will help test a wild idea — if a grapefruit-sized black hole lurks undiscovered in the outer edges of our solar system.
Over the past few years, researchers have noticed an odd clustering in the orbits of multiple trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which dwell in the deep, dark depths of the far outer solar system. Some scientists have hypothesized that the TNOs' paths have been sculpted by the gravitational pull of a big object way out there, something five to 10 times more massive than Earth, though others think the objects may just be tugging on each other.
This big "perturber," if it exists, maybe a planet — the so-called "Planet Nine," or "Planet X" or "Planet Next" for those who regard Pluto as the ninth planet. But there's another possibility as well: The out-of-sight object maybe a black hole, one that crams all that mass into a sphere the size of a grapefruit.
In the vicinity of a black hole, small bodies that approach it will melt as a result of heating from the background accretion of gas from the interstellar medium onto the black hole. Once they melt, the small bodies are subject to tidal disruption by the black hole, followed by accretion from the tidally disrupted body onto the black hole. Such accretion causes radiation emission, flashes that briefly shine a light on dark and mysterious objects, and because black holes are intrinsically dark, the radiation that matter emits on its way to the mouth of the black hole is our only way to illuminate this dark environment.
Telescopic data should be able to confirm or rule out the Planet-Nine-is-a-black-hole hypothesis within a year of the survey's commencement, according to the new study.
Writer: Ariya Gupta
26/07/2020
Comments