Several 'Echoing' Black Holes Have Just Been Discovered in The Milky Way

Michelle Starr - Yesterday 1:44 AM



Artist's impression of a black hole accretion disk.

Within the Milky Way, astronomers have just identified eight new examples of these echoing black holes. Previously, only two had been identified within our galaxy.

Having such an expanded number so close to home is allowing a much closer study of these fascinating objects, with the unique insight they can offer into black hole physics.

Stellar-mass black holes – those that formed from the collapse of a massive stellar core – are thought to be fairly common in the Milky Way.

There are as many as a billion of the things drifting around the galaxy, but they're pretty hard to detect; to date, we've only identified a few. That's because, unless they're active, they don't emit any radiation we can detect. They're effectively invisible.

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