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So do I take it that the twenty solar mass figure they were talking about in the article is not the (currently understood) upper limit to stellar black hole mas
by danparsonson 6y ago
So do I take it that the twenty solar mass figure they were talking about in the article is not the (currently understood) upper limit to stellar black hole mass, but refers to something else?
The line I'm referring to is "...Astronomers know of a few dozen black hole X-ray binary systems in the Milky Way and nearby, all of which have imputed masses of less than 20 times that of the sun. That apparent limit suggested that it was hard for black holes to grow more massive..."
- sandworm101 6y agoThere is a theoretical mass gap based on mathematical models of how stars work. Then there is a mass gap based on observations of real BHs. These gaps don't line up perfectly. Either our observations are imperfect or our math is wrong.
- danparsonson 6y agoThanks for your answers so far, I'm sorry I'm still being dim - the 'mass gaps' per the Wikipedia article you linked are thought to be in the region of "2 to 5 and 50 to 150 solar masses", and therefore stellar black holes are expected to be around 5-50 solar masses. The NYT article puts Cygnus X1 at 21 solar masses and therefore safely in the realm of possibility, but apparently now big enough to cause a problem, being bigger than 20 solar masses which was some other previous limit (the limit for a binary system?). I don't understand why it couldn't have been <= 20Msol at formation, and then acquired the rest parasitically from it's companion.