Monster Black Hole That 'Should Not Exist' Discovered in the Milky Way (cnet.com) 49
An anonymous reader shares a report: Astronomers think our home galaxy -- the Milky Way -- is practically bursting with black holes, with estimates of up to 100 million of the invisible beasts hiding across the galactic neighborhood. It was generally assumed these black holes could reach a mass of up to 20 times that of the sun, but the discovery of a "monster" black hole, with about 70 times the mass of the sun, has surprised Chinese astronomers. In a new study, published in the journal Nature on Nov. 27, a research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences peered across the galaxy with the Large sky Area Multi-Object fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (Lamost), based at Xinglong Observatory in China. Black holes don't emit light, so astronomers have to get crafty when they go hunting for them.
Usually, this involves looking for signs a black hole is feasting on a nearby star or the gas and dust that swirls around them. If the black hole isn't feasting and if it isn't surrounded by bright gas and dust, it becomes a little trickier to locate. But, using Lamost, the team examined the movement of stars across the sky, searching for those that seemed to be orbiting an invisible object. Follow-up observations with telescopes in Spain and the US helped the researchers discover a star about eight times bigger than the sun. Intriguingly, it was orbiting a "dark companion": The monster black hole, dubbed LB-1. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of China and first author of the study, in a press release. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."
Usually, this involves looking for signs a black hole is feasting on a nearby star or the gas and dust that swirls around them. If the black hole isn't feasting and if it isn't surrounded by bright gas and dust, it becomes a little trickier to locate. But, using Lamost, the team examined the movement of stars across the sky, searching for those that seemed to be orbiting an invisible object. Follow-up observations with telescopes in Spain and the US helped the researchers discover a star about eight times bigger than the sun. Intriguingly, it was orbiting a "dark companion": The monster black hole, dubbed LB-1. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of China and first author of the study, in a press release. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."
them are small holes (Score:3, Informative)
A monster black hole is something over 1000 suns. There's one in Messier 87 that's 7 billion suns. The ones they are talking about are small ones created by star collapse.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
https://www.britannica.com/pla... [britannica.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Re:them are small holes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
A physical limit (do they go super-black-nova?) or a statistical "limit" based on modeling cosmological evolution?
If the latter, why is the probability function of further merger so abrupt?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How is that relevant to mergers though?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: them are small holes (Score:1)
Right. I had a monster hamster once. It was twice as big as the other hamsters.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Location location location (Score:1)
It's expected there are very large black-holes at the center of galaxies. However, there is no known reason for such to exist in typical "suburban" areas of a galaxy. When large stars die, they blow most of their mass away, and are not statistically likely to encounter other black holes afterwards.
Thus, if such large suburban black-holes are common, it would probably mean either theories on large star death are wrong, or some unknown process is merging holes.
Re: (Score:3)
You're correct. In fact they have imaged more than one at this point which are in that range. (100,000-billions of solar masses)
The article was not written by a scientist, but they failed to grasp how a solar mass black hole differs from the theoretical/physical concept of a black hole. Solar mass black holes are a certain variety of black hole, with a certain lifecycle. Since they form from stars, scientists base their properties on what we know about stars, and how they collapse into black holes. If there
They found another? (Score:3, Informative)
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Delayed post because pointing out a dupe doesn't take long enough for /.
Re:They found another? (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't a dupe. This is a different detection of another black hole by an entirely different method (optically with LAMOST, not gravitationally as with LIGO/VIRGO) that lies in the 50-120 solar mass range.
Both both stories falsely use terms like "impossible" and "should not exist" when at most "unexpected" should be applied.
The real story here is that we know of no mechanism that will produce black holes in this range directly. Pair instability blows up stars in the necessary range so that they cannot form black holes. But notice I said directly. Smaller black holes, so two 40 solar mass black holes could merge and produce a 70 solar mass black hole (with 10 solar masses being radiated away as gravity waves). So we already know how such black holes can form.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm confident that your waving away 10 solar masses due to gravitational waves is incorrect. The universe hasn't been in existence long enough for even a tiny fraction of that mass loss to occur.
Hawking radiation is the typical way we describe black holes as 'evaporating' though loss of energy, and even though that effect massively dominates gravitational waves, we're still talking trillions of years to lose 1 solar mass. Again, longer than the universe's age.
Re: (Score:3)
This has nothing to do with Hawking radiation and entirely to do with the fact that in order for two black holes to merge, the gravitational potential energy between them has to go somewhere. It goes into gravitational waves. Two merging black holes will emit roughly 5% of their mass [aps.org] as gravitational waves.
Third Terror of the Milky Way (Score:3)
“But Westley, what about the BHOUS’s?”
“Black Holes of Unusual Size? I don’t believe they exist.”
SLURP...
Doubts exist ... (Score:5, Informative)
This is not a done deal yet.
Doubts exist [skyandtelescope.com], so more observations will confirm or refute that it is a 68 solar mass black hole, systemic errors, or something else.
Re: (Score:2)
wouldn't the easy explanation just be that it swallowed a red giant sometime in the past? and the current orbiter was part of some dual system with that star?
We've seen them before. (Score:2)
We've "watched" mergers with LIGO, and some of those ended up in this 70-80 M(sun) range. Why is it surprising that we've found one in our own galaxy? If models haven't been planning for these to show up, that's distinctly on a lack of imagination because we've known for a few years now that these objects exist in other galaxies, and there's no good reason to believe they don't also exist in ours.
Re: (Score:2)
What they haven't explained is the SMBHoles at the cantre of galaxies that mass millions or billions of stars. How did they originate?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
RTFA. The whole quote is not included in the headline. They did measure reality. They admit it doesn't fit current models. They said they need to create better models. Why are you bashing science instead of the clickbait headline?
Re: (Score:2)
These should not exist the same way bumblebees should not fly.
Re:Things That Should Not Exist? (Score:5, Informative)
You clearly don't know any scientists. I'm sure there are some scientists that fit your description, but it is a small minority. My experience is that most scientists are incredibly modest. Testing your constructs against reality has a humbling affect.
When I read a summary which doesn't fit with what I know of the subject area, rarely do I find the original scientific publication is the source of any hyperbolic statements.
Re: (Score:3)
> The plural of anecdote is not data.
It is if you're measuring anecdotes per second!
Re: (Score:2)
It's entirely reasonable to think that perhaps we have NOT seen everything there is to see.
Yeah. In fact I'm frequently surprised by stuff on Pornhub.
Re:Things That Should Not Exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any article about things that "scientists" say "should not exist" merely reveals that some "scientists" are too enamored of their theories and mathematical models,
Usually is means that science reporters are looking for clicks. Actual observations that can't possibly be explained by existing theories are very rare, and celebrated by scientists everywhere because they potentially mean a whole new field of study, with all the excitement and papers and jobs that go with it.
For example, a team of Hungarian scientists seem to have discovered a new particle that doesn't fit any of the common theories (they were looking for a "dark photon", but it's not that either). No one's quite willing to believe the good news just yet, but this particle that "should not exist" will be the most exciting thing in particle physics in decades if it actually, well, exists.
d that they are incapable of measuring reality and coming up with explanations for what they have actually discovered.
Something which basically is not to be found among actual scientists. Any new inexplicable observation, if confirmed, will be followed by a vast wave a papers hoping to explain it, sometimes launching a whole new discipline. Most of the papers will be rubbish, but there's never any lack of "coming up with explanations".
Re: Things That Should Not Exist? (Score:2)
For example, a team of Hungarian scientists seem to have discovered a new particle that doesn't fit any of the common theories
Not really. There are some pretty glaring problems with their methodology and, somewhat more concerning, this is at least the 4th "new particle" that this team has claimed to have discovered, with the past 3 all proving to be bogus (and at least one of them being due to the same kinds of methodological problems as we are seeing in the current discovery).
Yeah it would be incredibly exciting if it turns out that they've actually found something new this time ... but it's massively more likely that there's no
Re: (Score:1)
For example, a team of Hungarian scientists seem to have discovered a new particle that doesn't fit any of the common theories (they were looking for a "dark photon", but it's not that either). No one's quite willing to believe the good news just yet, but this particle that "should not exist" will be the most exciting thing in particle physics in decades if it actually, well, exists.
The X17 experiment and the possibility of a 5th fundamental force, right? I've thought that a 5th force likely existed for years
Only twice as massive? (Score:3)
"Impossible Size" and "Should not exist" - why not (Score:4, Interesting)
I've read that stellar BHs shouldn't be larger than some X. Why not? X+X=2X-(gravity wave energy) and we are picking up regular collisions of black holes with gravity wave detectors. To me it seems that there may be a smallest possible bh but anything between that and the very most massive should be possible with simple addition.
Re: (Score:2)
What's interesting is that I thought I read that that the large hadron collider may be creating black holes, but they evaporate very quickly due to Hawking radiation.
But this would mean there is an entire spectrum of black holes that exist for some X amount of time.
So no physicist should be surprised on the size of a black hole. They are all sizes for some finite amount of time. From mere milliseconds to billions of years.
I guess the title needs to be impressive and unusual to get eyes and clicks.
If you agr
Re: (Score:2)
It's mostly down to gravitational mechanics and statistics. Stars tend to form either by themselves or with 1 or 2 other stars. Any more than that and the chaotic nature of gravitational dynamics means either stars end up being ejected, or they collide together (even in trinary star systems the third star is usually quite far from the other two so it acts more like two single body systems, kind of like how the earth and moon orbit the sun together). Each star obeys standard stellar dynamics, so you can only
Click bait headline (Score:2)
It should exist. It does exist. Therefore its simply "we don't know why". Science should not be treated as a religion.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a black hole, just a plain old star (Score:2)