FP TrendingFeb 22, 2021 12:17:00 IST
New details of the first black hole seen in 1964 have emerged. According to the new study, the black hole is much larger than was previously known to astronomers. According to research published in the journal Science, the Cygnus X-1 has the largest black hole ever found and is 21 times the mass of our sun, making it 50 percent larger than researchers and scientists of the previous opinion. The Cygnus X-1 black hole was discovered when a pair of Geiger counters were sent into space on a rocket. This is one of the closest black holes to Earth.
Cygnus X-1 was last proven to have a black hole in its system in 1990. British physicist Sir Stephen Hawking reportedly lost a friendly scientific bet against Professor Kip Thorne over his status. Hawking accepted the message in 1990 after observational data supported the case that there was a black hole in the system. Although this theory has no direct or empirical evidence, it has been widely accepted based on indirect evidence.
Cygnus X-1 is located near large active regions of star formation in the Milky Way, as seen in this image spanning about 700 light-years across. In the last few years, studies with data from the Chandra Observatory and several other telescopes have confirmed the spinning, mass and speed of the black hole with unprecedented precision. Image: NASA
Astronomers had determined that the stellar mass was larger than the mass of the sun. They used a combination of more advanced telescopes and new techniques, including the Extreme Baseline Array which is a continental-sized radio telescope made up of 10 vessels across the United States, to measure distances in space.
Professor James Miller-Jones, lead author from Curtin University, said astronomers looked at the same object from different locations allowing astronomers to work out their distance, by measuring how far and the object seemed to be moving relative to the back. Its black hole and its massive partner star, which is 22 times larger than the Sun, orbit each other every five and a half days.
Xueshan Zhao is a co-author and Ph.D. a candidate who studied at the National Astronomical Observatories – part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) in Beijing, using the updated measurements for the mass of the black hole and the distance from Earth, said that can confirm that Cygnus X-1 spun close to the speed of light and faster than any other black hole found to date.