The First Black Hole Ever Discovered is More Massive Than We Thought (technologyreview.com) 31
Neel V. Patel, writing at MIT Technology Review: Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes when he published his theory of general relativity in 1916, describing how gravity shapes the fabric of spacetime. But astronomers didn't spot one until 1964, some 6,070 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation. Geiger counters launched into space detected cosmic x-rays coming from a region called Cygnus X-1. (We now know the cosmic rays are produced by black holes. Back then, scientists disagreed about what it was: Stephen Hawking famously bet physicist Kip Thorne that this signal was not from a black hole, but he conceded in 1990.) Now, some 57 years later, scientists have learned that the black hole at Cygnus X-1 is much more massive than first believed -- forcing us to once again rethink how black holes form and evolve. This time, the observations were taken from Earth's surface. "To some extent, the result was serendipitous," says James Miller-Jones of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research at Curtin University in Australia, the lead author of the new study, published in Science. "We had not initially set out to remeasure the distance and black hole mass, but when we had analyzed our data, we realized its full potential."
Black holes are objects so massive that not even light, let alone physical matter, is supposed to escape its gravitational pull. Yet sometimes one inexplicably spews jets of radiation and ionized matter into space. Miller-Jones and his team wanted to investigate how matter is sucked into and expelled from black holes, so they took a closer look at Cygnus X-1. They observed the black hole for six days using the Very Long Baseline Array, a network of 10 radio telescopes sited across North America from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. The resolution is comparable to what would be required to spot a 10-centimeter object on the moon, and it's the same technique that the Event Horizon Telescope used to snap the first photo of a black hole. Using a combination of measurements involving radio waves and temperatures, the team modeled the precise orbits of both Cygnus X-1's black hole and the massive supergiant star HDE 226868 (the two objects orbit each other). Knowing the orbits of each object allowed the team to extrapolate their masses -- in the case of the black hole, 21 solar masses, which is about 50% more than once thought.
Black holes are objects so massive that not even light, let alone physical matter, is supposed to escape its gravitational pull. Yet sometimes one inexplicably spews jets of radiation and ionized matter into space. Miller-Jones and his team wanted to investigate how matter is sucked into and expelled from black holes, so they took a closer look at Cygnus X-1. They observed the black hole for six days using the Very Long Baseline Array, a network of 10 radio telescopes sited across North America from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. The resolution is comparable to what would be required to spot a 10-centimeter object on the moon, and it's the same technique that the Event Horizon Telescope used to snap the first photo of a black hole. Using a combination of measurements involving radio waves and temperatures, the team modeled the precise orbits of both Cygnus X-1's black hole and the massive supergiant star HDE 226868 (the two objects orbit each other). Knowing the orbits of each object allowed the team to extrapolate their masses -- in the case of the black hole, 21 solar masses, which is about 50% more than once thought.
Well, that's solved that mystery. (Score:2, Interesting)
There's your missing dark matter, bro.
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It's a fascinating possibility. The deduced existence of "dark matter" as exotic, non-baryonic matter could indeed be an inference, rather than a deduction: inventing new forms of matter is exciting physics, rather than finding from experimentation and observation that the deductions of the mass in galaxies or in intergalactic space are flawed.
Sisters (Score:2, Interesting)
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OK (Score:2)
21 solar masses? Yea, that's bigger that I thought. I had reckoned it on being a mere 19 solar masses.
Spew (Score:2)
Spewing? Isn't the term astronomers use, hurling?
And isn't it amazing it hasn't lost more mass from dehydration by now?
I'm confused about the year 1916 though. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm confused about the year 1916 though. (Score:4, Interesting)
1916 was the year when Karl Schwarzschild published a solution for Einstein's equations
Historical trivia: Schwarzchild developed his equations in his spare time while serving in the German Army on the Russian Front during the 1st World War. He died later the same year.
Einstein believed that black holes could not exist and developed incorrect theories explaining why.
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Einstein believed that black holes could not exist and developed incorrect theories explaining why.
clearly Einstein had never seen someone attempt to divide by zero. https://pogoprinciple.files.wo... [wordpress.com]
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Albert Einstein's General Relativity was published in 1915 already. 1916 was the year when Karl Schwarzschild published a solution for Einstein's equations, which described a Black Hole. (Most real Black Holes are better described with Roy Kerr's solution published in 1963.)
And the very first description any kind of black hole is John Mitchell in 1783. Stars too massive for light to escape exist in Newtonian physics as well, it is when the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. The critical radius for black holes in classical and general relativistic mechanics is the same.
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Light does not "bend" when changing media.
Photons travelling "through" a medium are absorbed and re-emitted by the atoms of the medium. The timing of the absorption and re-emission changes the vector of the photons, the average of which we describe as a change in refractive index.
The bending of light around massive objects is an entirely distinct phenomenon, and has to do with the warping (or contraction) of spacetime rather than absorption and emission.
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...
Photons travelling "through" a medium are absorbed and re-emitted by the atoms of the medium. The timing of the absorption and re-emission changes the vector of the photons, the average of which we describe as a change in refractive index.
The bending of light around massive objects is an entirely distinct phenomenon, and has to do with the warping (or contraction) of spacetime rather than absorption and emission.
Thank you. I was about to waste time educating the flat-earther
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"Event Horizon Telescope" (Score:3)
"Event Horizon Telescope"
I don't care where they do the final data assembly, if Sam Neill is in, I'm out.
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After all these years, I'm still so torn about that movie. I don't want my hour and a half back (and I'll even admit I'm probably up to 4.5 or 6 hours by now) but it's nevertheless disappointing. Oh, and you'll never get the director's cut anyway, because they lost so much footage!
I think Event Horizon would actually be a decent candidate for a remake. The basic plot idea is a good one.
It's a fact! Science! (Score:2)
It's a scientific fact that it's more massive!
It used to be a scientific fact that it was less massive.
Science! Listen to the Science!
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You are ignorant of what science is and does, earlier estimates were presented only as such, "estimates." Even this new value is called that. No claim of absolute fact has ever been made, and in fact you'll find Cygnus X-1 is called an X-ray source (fact) that is believed to be black hole.
Re: It's a fact! Science! (Score:2)
The sad truth (Score:2)
is that this is the fate awaiting us all as we age.