Many astronomers believe that the Milky Way is teeming with black holes, but so far only a handful have been found.
This term, boys from various year groups are working in teams to learn and identify more about Black Holes as part of a wider collaborative project run by the Black Hole Hunters who have appealed to the public to help them find some of the Milky Way galaxy’s millions of missing black holes.
Using data from the TESS satellite, they are asking for people to look at graphs of how the brightness of stars changes over time, looking for an effect called gravitational microlensing. This lensing effect can indicate that a massive object passed in front of a star – its gravity bending and focusing the star’s light. They then hope to use this to uncover the existence of otherwise invisible black holes.
The boys have joined the search for these tell-tale signals that may reveal the hidden black holes in our galaxy while also studying topics like gravitational micro lensing and black hole binary systems.
Fourth Former Daniel Lushchay explained, “The notion of participating in the Black Hole Hunters was to learn more about the topic and to see what I could achieve with my group. I plan to learn more about Black Holes and see just how successful testers are at identifying light curves and their correlations to Black Holes. Overall, I have greatly enjoyed the topic and meetings so far and I hope to learn more about Black Holes with my team in the future.”
In March, the boys will be visited by Dr Adam McMaster – an astrophysicist, to gain a deeper understanding about light curves and gravitational micro-lensing, giving them more to study on this topic.
The group is still open for students to participate. If interested please email Dr Palmer.