與我們之前看到的任何黑洞都不同

天文學(xué)家可能已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)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(xué)家們似乎在競(jìng)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(xué)家聲稱發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)質(zhì)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(xué)》上的一項(xiàng)研究中，來自俄亥俄州立大學(xué)的一組天文學(xué)家聲稱，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)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(bào)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(gè)種群有待我們?nèi)ヌ剿鳌?rdquo;

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(shí)，目前的理論將不得不考慮一個(gè)新的黑洞類別——這將迫使我們重新思考我們?nèi)绾卫斫夂阈呛推渌祗w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(tuán)隊(duì)對(duì)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(dāng)小的——質(zhì)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(gè)物體運(yùn)行，這個(gè)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(shí)是一個(gè)低質(zhì)量黑洞，只有太陽質(zhì)量的3.3倍——通常我們過去發(fā)現(xiàn)的黑洞至少是太陽質(zhì)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(huì)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(gè)新的黑洞種群，它將告訴我們更多關(guān)于哪些恒星會(huì)爆炸，哪些不會(huì)，哪些會(huì)形成黑洞，哪些會(huì)形成中子星，”湯普森說。“它開辟了一個(gè)新的研究領(lǐng)域。”