與我們之前看到的任何黑洞都不同

天文學家可能已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個黑洞，它與我們之前看到的任何黑洞都不同

It almost seems like astronomers are in a race to unveil the biggest black holes they can find. Most recently, a team of German astronomers claimed to have discovered a black hole 40 billion times the mass of the Sun.

天文學家們似乎在競相揭開他們所能發(fā)現(xiàn)的最大黑洞的面紗。最近，一組德國天文學家聲稱發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個質量是太陽400億倍的黑洞。

But what if there are also black holes many magnitudes smaller?

但是，如果還有比它小許多倍的黑洞呢?

In a study published today in the prestigious journal Science, a team of astronomers from Ohio State University claim to have discovered an object that belongs to a previously missing class of black holes.

在今天發(fā)表在著名雜志《科學》上的一項研究中，來自俄亥俄州立大學的一組天文學家聲稱，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個以前失蹤的黑洞。

"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," lead author Todd Thompson said in a statement.

研究報告的主要撰寫人托德·湯普森在一份聲明中說:“我們的研究表明，在尋找黑洞的過程中，還有另外一個種群有待我們去探索。”

If confirmed, current theories would have to take into account a new class of black hole - forcing us to rethink how we understand the way stars and other kinds of celestial objects are born and die.

如果得到證實，目前的理論將不得不考慮一個新的黑洞類別——這將迫使我們重新思考我們如何理解恒星和其他天體的誕生和死亡。

Thompson and his team were puzzled by the huge gap between the size of the biggest neutron stars - extremely dense and relatively small stars that form after larger stars implode after a supernova - and the smallest black holes we know of.

湯普森和他的團隊對最大的中子星和我們所知的最小的黑洞之間的巨大差距感到困惑。

Neutron stars are fairly small - two to three times the mass of the Sun - but stars any larger than that tend to collapse in on themselves and form black holes.

中子星是相當小的——質量是太陽的2到3倍——但是任何比它大的恒星都容易坍縮形成黑洞。

Their smoking gun: a giant red star that was orbiting something that at first appeared to be too small to be a black hole in the Milky Way, but was much bigger than the neutron stars we know of.

他們確鑿的證據(jù)是:一顆巨大的紅星圍繞著一個物體運行，這個物體起初看起來太小，不像是銀河系中的黑洞，但比我們所知的中子星大得多。

Their finding really did turn out to be a low-mass black hole, and it was only 3.3 times the mass of the Sun - usually the black holes we've found in the past are at least five times the Sun's mass or much, much larger.

他們的發(fā)現(xiàn)確實是一個低質量黑洞，只有太陽質量的3.3倍——通常我們過去發(fā)現(xiàn)的黑洞至少是太陽質量的5倍，或者更大。

The discovery could redefine the way we look at the life cycle of a star.

這一發(fā)現(xiàn)可能會重新定義我們看待恒星生命周期的方式。

"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," said Thompson. "It opens up a new area of study."

“如果我們能發(fā)現(xiàn)一個新的黑洞種群，它將告訴我們更多關于哪些恒星會爆炸，哪些不會，哪些會形成黑洞，哪些會形成中子星，”湯普森說。“它開辟了一個新的研究領域。”