Stellar black hole larger than thought discovered by Beijing observatory

Stellar black hole larger than thought discovered by Beijing observatory

A Chinese-led team of international scientists have discovered a stellar black hole in the Milky Way twice as massive as anything scientists previously thought.

The announcement was made during a press conference organized by the National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC) in Beijing on Thursday.

Until now, scientists had estimated the mass of an individual stellar black hole in our Galaxy at no more than 20 times that of the sun. The newly-discovered LB-1 black home, however, has a mass 70 times greater than the sun.

“This black hole, which is 70 times the mass of the sun, greatly exceeds the upper limit of the mass predicted by the theory, subverting people’s perception of the formation of stellar black holes. This is an innovation that is expected to promote the theory of stellar evolution and formation,” Zhao Gang, director of operation and development center (LAMOST), said during the press conference.

Xiangdong Li, the director of School of Astronomy and Space Science in Nanjing University, added that “the discovery of LB-1 presents us with new challenges.” 

“It shows that our existing theories may be incomplete. In other words, the formation of black hole binary stars still has such a way of formation that we are not aware of.”

The research team emphasized that the discovery was made possible because China’s sophisticated Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic telescope (LAMOST) used a new method for discovering black holes.

The research team reportedly comprised of scientists from China, the United States, Spain, Australia, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands. 

(Source: Ruptly) 

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