Black Holes and the Technology to Find Them

 

The population of black holes, objects left over from dead stars, in the Milky Way is almost entirely unexplored. Only about two dozen black holes are confidently known in our Galaxy -- all in “binary systems” where they orbit a living star. As a result, some of the most basic properties of black holes remain unknown, including the true number of black holes in the Galaxy, their masses and sizes, the fraction that are in binary systems, and how the black holes were formed. To understand these properties, we need to find and study a larger population of black holes, both in isolation and in binary systems. Gravitational lensing -- something predicted by Einstein’s work -- is opening a new window onto black holes, and the first free-floating black holes are now being discovered.  Astronomers expect that the number of known black holes will increase by a factor of 100 over the next decade.

Speaker: Jessica Lu, UC Berkeley