Today's guest, UC Berkeley Professor Jessica Lu, discusses the discovery of the first dark, isolated black hole or neutron star in the Milky Way using gravitational microlensing!

This ‘ghost black hole’ is far from the center of the Milky Way. We also discussed:

⬛ dark matter and the future of multi-messenger astronomy w/ the Roman and James Webb Space telescope as well as the Vera Rubin Observatory. Finally, we answered your❓Questions -- you can always submit them on the "Community" tab for this channel.

This work was led by UC Berkeley grad, Casey Lam, and details are in papers in The Astrophysical Journal (https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.01903). See Jessica's awesome Twitter thread on this discovery, and what it might mean:

https://twitter.com/jlu_astro/status/1535292954180341760?s=20&t=ZFaQb9iG5SIsaQW3ijH7ZQ

Please enjoy my black hole playlist for more on the theory and observation of these mysterious objects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvGInn1efR8&list=PLJGKdZD30K_9Gx0SBRjFn_TNPBN-9t9md

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Is a rogue black hole lurking in the Milky Way? | Professor Jessica Lu (#237)