Black Hole That Was Closest Yet Found Does Not Exist, Say Scientists in U-turn (theguardian.com) 20
Researchers have a new view of HR 6819: two stars, one of them a "vampire." From a report: Astronomers who thought they had discovered a black hole on our cosmic doorstep have said they were mistaken, instead revealing they have found a two-star system involving a stellar "vampire." The system, known as HR 6819 in the constellation Telescopium, was in the headlines in 2020 when researchers announced it contained a black hole. At just 1,000 light years from Earth, it was the closest yet found to our planet. At the time the team behind the work said the presence of a black hole was necessary to make sense of the movement of two stars in the system, suggesting a black hole and one star orbited each other while the second star moved in a wider orbit. Now the researchers say they were mistaken: the black hole does not exist.
Dietrich Baade, an emeritus astronomer at European Southern Observatory (ESO) and a co-author of the work, said just one blob of light was previously detected, containing the hallmarks of two stars. Since both stars are of similar brightness and the same age, they would normally have the same mass and would whirl each other around with similar, high velocity. "Since we saw that only one of the stars was whirled around at high velocity by some massive object, which we didn't see, we assumed this unseen massive object to be a third body, namely a black hole," he said.
Dietrich Baade, an emeritus astronomer at European Southern Observatory (ESO) and a co-author of the work, said just one blob of light was previously detected, containing the hallmarks of two stars. Since both stars are of similar brightness and the same age, they would normally have the same mass and would whirl each other around with similar, high velocity. "Since we saw that only one of the stars was whirled around at high velocity by some massive object, which we didn't see, we assumed this unseen massive object to be a third body, namely a black hole," he said.
First rule of slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
While the findings scotch the idea of a black hole, the researchers remain upbeat.
“The stripped star is even more exciting than the black hole because it was caught in a phase that lasts only a very small fraction of the total lifetime of the system,” said Baade.
“The excitement is not about the low chances of the discovery but about the stripped star revealing the inner part of the star. The stripping has removed the thick intransparent curtain of the outer layers so that we can look much closer to where the star has generated the energy that it is radiating away and has synthesised new elements.”
So just like many other discoveries, when more information comes in and it’s not the expected result, it’s actually still interesting.
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No, it means the astronomers were wrong and can never be trusted again. This proves you can't trust science.
And for those unsure if I'm being sarcastic, /s
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Or was it death taxes and traffic jams?
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The only certainty is doubt...
Trust no one, not even yourself.
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It does illustrate however why one is not to have too much faith in non-exact science.
There are many fields of science where conclusions are wrong about as often as they are right.
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"It does illustrate however why one is not to have too much faith in non-exact science. There are many fields of science where conclusions are wrong about as often as they are right."
That's misleading, and a bad use of the term "science".
One shouldn't have too much faith that the current answer is exactly right. But that's not "science". That's just the current set of conclusions arrived via "science". The fact that the conclusions change is a vindication of science - not a flaw.
The question one should ask
Science = 99.98% facts (Score:1)
They discovered it in 2020 and less than 2 years later recanted and proposed a different discovery.
I want science to progress yet without a blank 'all science research is good' check.
These scientists and college departments need to directly fund some part, even a tiny fraction, of what is paid for by government to weed out the drum beat of junk science crisis headlines.
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Well done - your proposal has blown a hole in part of your world-view. Try aiming at your foot next time - it'll hurt less.
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So you agree that in most fields of non-exact science conclusions are wrong as often as they are right
The fact that the conclusions change is a vindication of science - not a flaw.
It is not. If there are no guarantees that the conclusions are actually accurate, what use is making them?
The question one should ask when asking whether the body of knowledge improves over time. Ask whether old conclusions are challenged and deprecated when found lacking. By that criteria, there's no question that science is working.
No it is not; it is completely useless if I not have a reasonable guarantee that the conclusions are accurate.
And this is typically the difference with exact science: the conclusions are accurate, though perhaps not exactly accurate, but they are accurate enough to be useful. Later results in exact scie
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Only if you find newness interesting and not for example frightening.
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NFT? (Score:2)
Just trying to feed the crypto crowd but does this mean the Black Hole was an NFT? (pun intended)
They looked really hard (Score:2)
But they just couldn't see anything there!
Collapsed Wave? (Score:2)
Upon closer inspection (Score:1)
Upon closer inspection it was realized that there are no black holes.
Find the Friendly Paper (Score:2)
The original story was, I think, this one [slashdot.org]. It certainly refers to the same star in the HR catalogue. That comes off a Nat.Geo article (not linked to) ... which cites a paper in Astron.&.Astrophys which has an unpaywalled version [aanda.org].
This story refers to the Grauniad (respectable, but staffed by Histo