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Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole
- yieldcrv 2y ago[flagged]
- ssawa 2y agoWhy is that?
- yieldcrv 2y agobecause of the image’s inaccuracy, masqueraded as something one of our telescopes could visualize, but instead is a contrived make-work programme
- s1artibartfast 2y agoYet it will be replaced with another job to generate even less accurate images. It reminds me of a hilarious article Josh barrow wrote about the SV bank run. He uses AI article art for a bank run, which ended up as 6 fingered joggers along the bank of a river.
- yieldcrv 2y agousing 2 year old image models and prompting strategies? they can all do accurate hands now and what OpenAI’s working on understands physics I think this undermines the point you were aiming for
- pavlov 2y agoWhere do you think the AI image model gets the data for what artist's impressions of astronomic phenomena should look like? From all the artists who painted these in the past.
- yieldcrv 2y agoIncluding the ones that did it for self expression for free instead of an inaccurate visualization at the top of every space related article Just like they can do after that niche job goes poof
- Jevon23 2y agoNext time you’re confused about why people seem to hate “techbros”, remember that this is the reason.
- qrios 2y ago„Size“ is misleading. 33 solar masses is in fact small for a black hole. Sigatarius A is still the biggest in the Milky Way.
- Natsu 2y agoThey don't seem too clear on the science they're reporting, but if I'm understanding it right, this is supposed to be the largest stellar origin black hole. The fact that Sagittarius A* is just a bit under 4.3 million solar masses, which is a bit over 33, was my first thought, too.
- skywhopper 2y agoThe relevant definitions are explained in the article.
- aurareturn 2y ago"Stellar" means star.
- tokai 2y agoSigatarius A is not a stellar black hole now is it?
- devoutsalsa 2y agoWe don't know how supermassive blackholes form. It's a bit of a mystery.
- Prunkton 2y ago>black hole – 33 times size of sun >black hole 33 times more massive than the sun What a confusing article. Its 33 times the mass of the sun
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- codethief 2y agoIt's actually correct. The radius/diameter of a black hole is proportional to its mass.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoYes, but the size is not proportional to the suns mass, hence the error. size=/=mass
- pxeger1 2y agoAlso “33 times more massive than the sun” means 34 times the mass of the sun.
- Etheryte 2y agoOh boy, this sent me down a memory lane. I remember arguing long and hard with my math teacher in elementary school that "two times as massive" and "two times more massive than" are not the same thing, but she did not agree. That's the point where I learned that the grownup world is weird and sometimes it's easier to just smile and nod.
- macintux 2y agoFor me, it was the science teacher in middle school who insisted that rivers couldn't flow north, because on a globe, north was up. Even pointing out the Nile didn't change her mind; I imagine there's a denial joke to be made there.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoFor a related visualization about size/mass of suns and black holes: I Put 4M Suns in a Black Hole over New York [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDUUT2Y_9qk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDUUT2Y_9qk (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39735510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39735510)
- swozey 2y agoI totally forgot about this video, the amount of work is wild.
- tristramb 2y agoPreprint: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/forth/aa49763-24.pdf https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/forth/aa49763-24.pdf
- raattgift 2y agoThanks, that's always useful. §3 Discussion: "The estimated mass is also too large for one neutron stars or two neutron stars in a close orbit, so we are left with the possibility of: 1) a single BH; 2) an inner binary containing two BHs; or 3) a BH and another compact object. Although the single BH is the simplest explanation, the hypothesis of an inner binary of two BHs cannot be excluded [...] radial-velocity [...] perturbations are too small to be detected in the Gaia RVS [radial-velocity] data[.] For the purposes of the subsequent discussion we have adopted the single BH hypothesis as the most likely explanation." Someone with more patience (or more troll-energy) than I have right now might try to introduce this into the handful of threads here containing various complaints that (clearly assuming a single BH), "size" is being punned as mass in the newspaper article linked at the top. If, for example, the ~33 M_sun ("mass of the sun") mass is evenly divided between two central BHs with the giant branch star companion orbiting them (cf. Alpha Centauri AB + wide companion Alpha Centauri C and similar triples), what's the most reasonable understanding of "size"? Or what if the dark component has a mass-ratio of ~ 30:2 split between a BH and a satellite NS? Total mass remains ~33 M_sun, how has "size" changed? (Answer: "it hasn't". Generally I agree with the comments that read "size" as meaning mass and disagree that it should mean the Schwarzschild radius, and not just because the dark component might not be very Schwarzschild-like at all. Perhaps someone might do an ELI5 of dimensional analysis g = T^-2 L -> M = T^-2 L^3 or Gauss's law for gravity. (Serious ambition would be ELI12 of the argument around the "scale separation" towards the end of the excellent <https://physicscourses.colorado.edu/phys2210/phys2210_fa20/lecture/lec29-gauss-law-gravity/ https://physicscourses.colorado.edu/phys2210/phys2210_fa20/l...>, where we'd distinguish the scale of a possible inner-binary from the scale of the giant star's orbit around it.))
- canadianfella 2y ago[dead]
- vorticalbox 2y agoI was always under the impression there was only 1 black-hole in our galaxy, at it's centre.
- tomrod 2y agoThere are many, many more, probably ranging in size to tinier than a period (.) to the 33 Sol mass (so far). The one at the center of the galaxy is along for the ride! A good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-P5IFTqB98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-P5IFTqB98
- The_Colonel 2y ago> probably ranging in size to tinier than a period (.) "Probably" is a strong word, these are very hypothetical, the lightest observed black hole has a mass of 3 Suns.
- robin_reala 2y agoA three solar mass black hole is still only ~13km across. Not full-stop-sized, but closer to that than the diameter of the sun.
- volkadav 2y agoI'm guessing the 13km diameter refers to the event horizon rather than the singularity itself, which I gather could be considered as zero-sized, or maybe one Planck length in size because we can't definitively measure anything smaller, or ... Admittedly, it gets a bit philosophical. The sphere of no return isn't the thing, but it might as well be for any outside observer, but it isn't, but it could be viewed as such, but... :) Suffice to say I'm glad the closest thing to black holes I have to contend with in my daily life is a 2+ million line php codebase dating from the late Clinton administration.
- floxy 2y ago"Do Black Holes have Singularities?" by Roy Kerr (Yes, that Roy Kerr) https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.00841 https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.00841 https://www.pbs.org/video/what-if-singularities-do-not-exist-i2k7s0/ https://www.pbs.org/video/what-if-singularities-do-not-exist...
- klabb3 2y agoSo far, I assume.
- habibur 2y agoLargest "stellar" black hole in Milky Way. Not the "largest black hole" as some media are reporting it in their title. The largest black hole in Milky Way is million times more massive than our sun. Falls in super massive category.
- codeulike 2y agoSo they found the biggest one that isn't really big
- robin_reala 2y agoThey didn’t find the biggest one, they found the biggest one they’ve found so far. Which in all probability is pretty small.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoCode to fit the star's orbital parameters and make some of the plots in the paper: https://github.com/esa/gaia-bhthree/blob/main/Gaia_BH3_fit_astrometric_orbit.ipynb https://github.com/esa/gaia-bhthree/blob/main/Gaia_BH3_fit_a...
- codeulike 2y agoArticle triggers critical mass of pedantry on HN, thread collapses in on itself
- sega_sai 2y agoYes. It is kinda amazing to observe (as a professional astrophysicist) how people manage to find small (mostly irrelevant) things to nitpick instead of discussing a really interesting discovery.
- blueflow 2y agoI postulated in another thread yesterday that the use of exxagerations / superlatives might be triggering contra. If we had the same article, but with the title "Black hole with 33 times the mass of the sun discovered" we could measure if the reactions are less severe.
- Ar-Curunir 2y agoit unfortunately happens in every field, including more theoretical parts of computer science. the commenters usually don't understand the science, so choose to nitpick on the aesthetics.
- xpe 2y agoPeople's contributions rise to the level of their expertise.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mrtri 2y ago[dead]
- m3kw9 2y agoDoes every galaxy have a super massive black hole at the Center?
- kstrauser 2y agoNearly every. That’s the current thinking.
- HomoJS 2y ago[flagged]
- pfdietz 2y agoAstronomers have not discovered the Milky Way's biggest stellar black hole. They have found the largest stellar black hole of all the galactic stellar black holes they've found so far. Since the Milky Way likely has 100 million stellar black holes, finding the largest is going to be quite a task. Bart: this is the biggest stellar black hole. Homer: this is the biggest stellar black hole so far.
- TheDudeMan 2y ago"Sagittarius A has the combined mass of several million suns. It lurks at the heart of the galaxy and formed not from an exploding star but the collapse of vast clouds of dust and gas." How is that known? Isn't "dust and gas" also how stars form?
- alje 2y agoEvery galaxy we know of contains a massive black hole in the center. Until recently, the widely held belief was that massive black holes are formed via the process of mearging smaller black holes in large timeframes. However, once the JWST came online, astrophysicists discovered early massive black holes close to big bang that could not be explained by that cumulative process. There just was no time for the cumulative creation to a such large black holes. So the current working hypothesis for massive black holes in galaxies is that they formed directly from the gravitational collapse of "vast clouds of gas and dust" with such high gravitational pressure that the core couldn't keep up, and the entire mass of gas and dust collapsed into a massive black hole. There is no supernova involvement; merely a direct transition into a black hole. Of course, take my laic simplification into account.
- kubanczyk 2y agoA vast cloud of what gas and what dust? I thought we had started with only hydrogen and I thought that collapsing the hydrogen creates stars first. How could it even cut directly to the stage of black hole?
- xpe 2y agoSomewhat of an aside: I've grown tired of Roman mythology being foisted upon our planet names. But I'm even more tired of hearing NASA spokespeople talk about e.g. "exploring the heavens". At least they don't say "firmament" or refer to the Earth's mantle as being infernal.