The discussion centers around the recent discovery of a black hole that appears to exceed the predicted stellar-mass limit, raising questions about the validity of current astrophysical models. Participants explore the implications of this finding, including potential explanations and the accuracy of the measurements involved.
Participants do not reach a consensus on the implications of the black hole's mass or the accuracy of its measurement. Multiple competing views and uncertainties remain regarding the nature of the black hole and the validity of the initial findings.
The discussion highlights limitations in the current understanding of black hole formation and mass limits, as well as the dependence on observational data that may be subject to revision.
Astronomers have found a seemingly “impossible” black hole about 14,000 light-years away. Their observations, published in the November 28th Nature, suggest that the weird object weighs in at a staggering 68 times the mass of the Sun.
While much heftier black holes, dubbed supermassive, reside in the cores of most large galaxies, theories predict an upper limit of some 45 to 55 solar masses for a “stellar-mass” black hole that forms in the aftermath of a supernova explosion. According to Craig Wheeler (University of Texas, Austin), “This is clearly an interesting story, if verified.
Indeed, LIGO and Virgo have detected gravitational waves from the mergers of black holes of up to 50 solar masses. So the new discovery could be a pre-merger binary black hole. Or maybe the pair has already merged, although that would be unlikely, given the young age of the system — the companion star is only 35 million years old.
Interesting! But possibly this is not the end of the story yet:Janus said:Quick update on this topic. It looks like the estimation of the Black hole's size could have very well been mistaken:
https://www.space.com/monster-black...KTCnAlQHl3-_FxJA9NU5sWlIPTvpiJeDjZtSxL7RZV43E
Let's see their feedback.Space.com reached out to Liu's team for comment, and Liu said that "We are writing a paper to address all these concerns." He added that his team expects that paper to be out sometime next week.
That's why I said "could have very well been" rather than "was".lomidrevo said:Interesting! But possibly this is not the end of the story yet:
Let's see their feedback.