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AbouBenAdhem t1_je9vp5e wrote

Reply to comment by Andromeda321 in Gaia discovers a new family of black holes: astronomers studied the orbits of stars and noticed that some of them wobbled on the sky, as if they were gravitationally influenced by massive objects. No light could be found using several telescopes, leaving only one possibility: black holes. by Andromeda321

  • How common is it to have enough observations of a star to be able to detect this kind of wobble in its orbit?

  • Does this affect our estimate for the overall prevalence of black holes, if the first one discovered by this method isn’t emitting the x-rays we’ve used to find the other currently-known ones?

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Andromeda321 OP t1_je9wwr9 wrote

  1. Not common at all, that's why it's literally only happened two times. Happens much more commonly when searching for exoplanets however.

  2. It does! It implies the rate of black holes is much higher than previously thought!

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