Astronomers contemplating black holes in the galaxy, the Milky Way, have found what they believe to be a new sort of black hole. This beforehand unknown class of black holes could be smaller than others that were previously named the smallest black holes.

The analysts were making a black hole census when they made the disclosure. Their finding, notwithstanding sharing a novel method to look for black holes, published Thursday in the journal Science.

“We’re showing this hint that there is another population out there that we have yet to really probe in the search for black holes,” said Todd Thompson, lead study author and professor of astronomy at Ohio State University.

Black holes can form after stars die, breakdown and explode, making gravitational whirls so strong that not by any means light can escape them. They can be found at the center of galaxies, acting like a supermassive engine.

Yet, that is not generally the situation. At the point when a few stars die and breakdown, they form neutron stars, which are small and incredibly dense.

These are both essential to study in light of the fact that astronomers can find out about the development of stars and black hole formation.

Be that as it may, if astronomers just spotlight on supermassive black holes, similar to the one at the center of the galaxy, and neutron stars, they’re missing entire demographics of the populace, the analysts said. They contrasted it with census takers just including individuals of a particular height.

“People are trying to understand supernova explosions, how supermassive black stars explode, how the elements were formed in supermassive stars,” Thompson said. “So if we could reveal a new population of black holes, it would tell us more about which stars explode, which don’t, which form black holes, which form neutron stars. It opens up a new area of study.”

Black holes are frequently found in binary systems, where two stars orbit one another – like the twin suns, everyone sees on Tatooine in the “Star Wars” films.

On the off chance that one star dies, the other still orbit the space where it existed, regardless of whether that space is presently filled by a black hole or neutron star.

Until this study, astronomers discovered black holes that clocked in between five and 15 times the mass of the sun, while neutron stars are just around two times the mass of the sun. In any case, a neutron star could collapse and turn into a black hole on the off chance that it arrived at more than 2.5 times the mass of the sun. At that point, that black hole would develop.

Things changed after the gravitational wave observatory called LIGO spotted two black holes converging into one of every a galaxy 1.8 million light-years away. The two tremendous black holes were 31 times the mass of the sun and 25 times its mass, respectively.

“Immediately, everyone was like ‘wow,’ because it was such a spectacular thing,” Thompson said. “Not only because it proved that LIGO worked, but because the masses were huge. Black holes that size are a big deal — we hadn’t seen them before.”

This extended the known range for black holes, proposing they could be bigger. However, shouldn’t something be said about those that were smaller, existing between the limit of neutron stars and black holes?

Thompson and his associates went to APOGEE information. It’s the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, which has watched the light from 100,000 stars in the Milky Way.

They hoped to check whether moves in the wavelengths of the star recommended an individual friend that was otherwise undetectable. On the off chance that they indicated a change in wavelength, going from blue to red, it may propose that the partner had transformed into a black hole.

While narrowing down the list of stars to the most likely candidates, Thompson and his partners found a monster red star orbiting an option that is smaller than the smallest known black hole however bigger than any realized neutron star.

The potential low-mass black hole is believed to be 3.3 times the mass of the sun. Already, the smallest black hole found was 3.8 times the mass of the sun.

“What we’ve done here is come up with a new way to search for black holes, but we’ve also potentially identified one of the first of a new class of low-mass black holes that astronomers hadn’t previously known about,” Thompson said. “The masses of things tell us about their formation and evolution, and they tell us about their nature.”