Monster stellar black hole busts theory

DyerWolf · #1 (**permalink**) 18-October-2007, 01:52 PM

or so claims this article on MSNBC.

Quote:

The newly weighed black hole is 16 solar masses. It orbits a companion star in the spiral galaxy Messier 33, located 2.7 million light-years from Earth. Together they make up the system known as M33 X-7.
...
"The black hole must have lost a large amount of mass for the two objects to be so close," Tomasz Bulik, an astronomer at the University of Warsaw in Poland, writes in related Nature article. "But on the other hand, it must have retained enough mass to form such a heavy black hole."

antoniseb · #2 (**permalink**) 18-October-2007, 03:09 PM

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the black hole formed at a smaller size, and was able to consume several solar masses of material after formation. BTW, this process would certainly have created jets, possibly favoring one side over the other based on the infall stream. This could potentially account for (by chance) the close orbit... that is the jet could have stolen orbital energy.

Note that this is a gut answer with no math or drawings to back it up. It is entirely possible that the researchers considered this possibility and rejected it for good reasons.

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