New evidence suggests that the first known black hole is larger than previously thought, which may force scientists to reconsider their understanding of how giant stars give rise to black holes.
Scientists think that black masses of stellar masses, which contain up to several times the solar mass, form when giant stars die and collapse on themselves. The first black hole ever discovered was Cygnus X-1, located in the Milky Way in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers saw the first signs of the black hole in 1964 by means of gas sucked away from a blue supergiant star. When this gas enters the black hole, it becomes so hot that it emits high-energy X-rays and gamma rays that can detect satellites.
A three study in 2011 suggested that Cygnus X-1 is located about 6,070 light-years from Earth, but new research suggests that the black hole is actually about 7,240 light-years away. Because other features of the object are calculated remotely, the new calculation suggests that Cygnus X-1 is slightly larger than scientists realized.
Related: What happens in the middle of a black hole?
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To estimate the distance from the black hole, scientists use the so-called parallax technique, which examines Cygnus X-1 compared to its background. ‘If you hold a finger on an arm’s length and close one eye and then the other one, you’ll see it [your finger] appears to be moving from one place to another compared to more distant background objects, “said James Miller-Jones, an astrophysicist at the Curtin University Node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Australia. of the new study and co-author of some of the 2011 research, told Space.com. “With the same idea, one can calculate how far Cygnus X-1 was by looking at it from different vantage points while the earth around the the sun is moving. “
The work from 2011 analyzed the light of the black hole’s companion to help estimate the diameter of the star. With this measurement, researchers calculated other details of the partnership, such as the mass of the black hole, indicating that it was about 14.8 times that of the sun.
However, the research in 2011 did not collect data from the black hole during a full orbit around its companion. Without that information, previous work could not fully explain how these rotational motions could affect distance and mass estimates.
In the new study, Miller-Jones and his colleagues analyzed the observations of Cygnus X-1 from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a giant radio telescope of ten dishes spread across the United States. observations made on consecutive days, the researchers monitored the full trajectory of the black hole.
Using the parallax technique on this new data, combined with the 2011 data, the scientists found that the black hole was further away than previously thought, approximately 7,240 light-years from Earth.
These new findings led the researchers to review which models of the movements of Cygnus X-1’s companion star were, which in turn led to a new estimated mass for the black hole – about 21.2 times that of the sun. This size makes Cygnus X-1 the largest black hole ever observed with observations of light. (Gravity wave observations such as LIGO that detect wrinkles in the tissue of space and time have detected larger black holes, one of which is about 50 times the mass of the sun.)
These findings suggest that the stars that form black holes will not lose as much material through winds as previously thought. “The mass of a black hole is determined by how massive a star started it,” Miller-Jones said. “Stars lose mass as winds blow from their surface, and massive stars generate stronger winds. The most massive stars can have very powerful winds, and lose a lot of mass through them before forming black holes.”
The new-found giant size of Cygnus X-1 therefore suggests that the stars that form black holes of star power may be larger than previously thought. “Previous models have predicted that the most massive black hole that a massive star should be able to make in our galaxy may only be about 15 times the mass of the sun,” Miller-Jones said. “So to find the solar mass 21 times, we need to revise our estimates of how much mass these massive stars are losing.”
The updated estimates of the mass and distance of the black hole also help the object rotate very close to the speed of light, ‘faster than any other black hole found so far’, co-author Xueshan Zhao studied at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said in a statement.
And even larger black mass star masses are waiting for scientists’ attention. “Cygnus X-1 is arguably the most massive black mass it can produce,” Miller-Jones said. “The question is whether we can identify them, and how accurately can we measure their masses?”
The scientists presented their findings online on February 18 in the journal Science. Two other articles focusing on different aspects of this work will also appear in The Astrophysical Journal on February 18th.
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