WASHINGTON: A new study has revealed new details about the first ever discovered black hole, which was spotted in 1964 and became the subject of friendly betting among eminent scientists, including that it is larger than previously known.
Researchers said Thursday (February 18) that new observations of the Cygnus X-1 black hole, orbiting a stellar marriage with a large and light star, showed that it is 21 times the mass of our sun, about 50 s one hundred times more than he had previously believed.
Although it is still one of the closest black holes, they found it to be a little further away than previously estimated, at 7,200 light years – the distance light travels in a year – 9.5 trillion km from Earth.
Black holes are very dense, with gravity pulls so brutal that not even light escapes. Some – the “supermassive” black holes – are quite large, like the one at our Milky Way galaxy center four million times larger than the sun. Smaller “stellar-mass” black holes occupy a single star mass.
Cygnus X-1 is the most recognizable black hole at Milky Way and among the strongest X-ray sources visible from Earth, said astronaut James Miller-Jones of Curtin University and the International Center for Research Radio Astronomy in Australia, led the study published in the journal Science.
LEARNING: There are two stars closest to Earth
This black hole spins so fast, almost at a light speed, that it approaches the highest level seen under Albert Einstein ‘s physics theory of general relativity, Miller – Jones said.
He wears material blowing from the surface of the companion star he closes tightly, “blue blue” about 40 times the beauty of our sun. It started there four million to five million years ago as a star up to 75 times the size of the sun and fell into a black hole a few tens of thousands of years ago.
The research included data from the True Baseline Array radio telescope containing 10 U.S. observation stations.
After the Cygnus X-1 was first introduced as a black hole, a bet was placed between physicist Stephen Hawking, who objected to being one, and Kip Thorne, who placed a bet e. Hawking eventually surrendered, due to a subscription to Thorne’s Pentne magazine.
“Of course, I didn’t have any wagers riding on those decisions,” Miller-Jones said.