The first black hole ever discovered, thanks to the use of suborbital rockets in 1964, called “Cygnus X-1,” has received new updates about its surroundings and speed. to Earth, shedding new light on the celestial mass on which it played a major role in the history of our knowledge of space.
A new study has revealed new information about Cygnus X-1, suggesting that it is larger than previously known. Researchers said Thursday that new observations of the black hole, revolving around in a stellar marriage with a large and light star, show that it is 21 times the mass of the sun, about 50% larger than it used to be. believe before.
Although it remains one of the closest black holes, they found it to be a little further away than previously estimated, at 7,200 light-years away from Earth. A light year is the distance that light travels in a year that equates to 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.9 trillion miles).
Black holes are very dense, with gravity grafts so brittle, that not even light escapes. Some, known as the “supermassive” black holes, are quite large, such as the one at our Milky Way galaxy center which is 4 million times the mass of 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 Radio Astronomy Research in Australia, which led the study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
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 4 million to 5 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 Real Long Baseline Array radio telescope made up of 10 U.S. observation stations, according to Reuters.
Cygnus X-1 was also the subject of a friendly bet between two of today’s most famous seers, Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne. Hawking promised it wasn’t a black hole, Thorne bet it was. Hawking eventually took up the pledge, thanks to Thorne’s year-long membership of Penthouse magazine.
Hawking would describe the bet as a kind of “insurance policy,” saying in his book “A Brief History of Time” that his work was not to go to waste. “(My job) would all be lost if there didn’t seem to be any black holes. But in that case, I would be happy to win my bet, which would win me four years of Private Eye magazine, ”wrote Hawking.
“Of course, I didn’t have any wagers riding on those decisions,” Miller-Jones said.