Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2018

19 MAY-JUNE 2018 SPACE CHRONICLES “We are anxious to see how the star will behave under the black hole’s violent pull. Will S0-2 follow Einstein’s theory or will the star defy our cur- rent laws of physics? We will soon find out!” The study also sheds more light on the strange birth of S0-2 and its stellar neighbors in the S-Star Cluster. The fact that these stars exist so close to the supermassive black hole is unusual because they are so young; how they could’ve formed in such a hostile envi- ronment is a mystery. “Star formation at the Galactic Cen- ter is difficult because the brute strength of tidal forces from the black hole can tear gas clouds apart before they can collapse and form stars,” said Do. “S0-2 is a very special and puzzling star,” said Chu. “We don’t typically see young, hot stars like S0-2 form so close to a supermassive black hole. This means that S0-2 must have formed a dif- ferent way .” There are several the- T he orbit of S0-2 (light blue) located near the Milky Way’s supermas- sive black hole will be used to test Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and gener- ate poten- tially new gravita- tional mod- els. [S. Sakai/ A.Ghez/ W. M. Keck Observa- tory/UCLA Galactic Center Group] companion star for S0-2,” said Chu. This new constraint brings astron- omers closer to understanding this unusual object. “Stars as massive as S0-2 almost always have a binary com- panion. We are lucky that having no companion makes the measurements of general relativis- tic effects easier, but it also deepens the mystery of this star,” said Do. The Galactic Center Group now plans to study other S-Stars orbiting the super- massive black hole, in hopes of differ- entiating between the varying theories that attempt to ex- plain why S0-2 is single. L ead author Devin Chu of Hilo, Hawaii is an astron- omy graduate student at UCLA. The Hilo High School and 2014 Dart- mouth College alumnus con- ducts his re- search with the UCLA Galactic Center Group, which uses the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii Is- land to obtain scientific data. [D. Chu] ories that provide a possible expla- nation, with S0-2 being a binary as one of them. “We were able to put an upper limit on the mass of a !