There could be planets around the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy – and we may be ready to find them, scientists say.
That hope comes after researchers found the first ever binary star near a supermassive black hole. That black hole happens to be Sagittarius A*, the one at the middle of the Milky Way.
The finding not only sheds light on such stars, and how they might be able to survive such extreme environments. It also suggests that we could be able to find planets there, too.
In the past, scientists have thought that it may be possible for stars to even survive the harsh environment around a supermassive black hole. Young stars found nearby suggest that is not true, however, and that even pairs of stars are able to thrive – if briefly – in such an environment.
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As such, scientists believe that alien planets could potentially survive there, too. Researchers hope that it might be possible to see them with upcoming equipment including upgrades to the Very Large Telescope and Extremely Large Telescope.
“Our discovery lets us speculate about the presence of planets, since these are often formed around young stars. It seems plausible that the detection of planets in the Galactic centre is just a matter of time,” said Florian Peißker, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, and lead author of the new study.
The work is described in a new paper, ‘A binary system in the S cluster close to the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*’, published in the journal Nature Communications.
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