4 ms·
„Size“ is misleading. 33 solar masses is in fact small for a black hole. Sigatarius A is still the biggest in the Milky Way.
by qrios 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago"Stellar" means star.
- tokai 3y agoSigatarius A is not a stellar black hole now is it?
- devoutsalsa 3y agoWe don't know how supermassive blackholes form. It's a bit of a mystery.
- tokai 3y agoThat doesn't matter, you are toying with semantics. If astronomers say stellar black hole, they don't mean supermassive black holes at galactic centers. Even if Sagittarius A* was initially a stellar black hole, its more now.
- Aachen 2y agoI hadn't heard of the distinction stellar or non-stellar black hole before. It rather sounds like semantics to me to say this is one type of black hole and not another when it's physically the same thing and we don't know how it formed to begin with The headline confused me as well: 33 solar masses (not sizes) seems tiny to me, I was sure we knew of bigger ones
- tokai 2y agoIts not semantics. Its precise terminology. Ignoring this and redefining the precis terms because one lacks knowledge about the subject and arguing from faulty assumptions is a waste of everyone's time.
- Sharlin 2y agoThe distinction is clear and relevant because the mass distribution is strongly bimodal. A stellar black hole is the result of the gravitational collapse of a single star (well, or two at most). And maybe some of them have since then merged with a companion body. There are zillions of these in any given galaxy. Whereas there are maybe one or two supermassive black holes per galaxy, sitting in the center, with mass of millions or billions of suns, and we don’t quite know how they first formed and how they have accumulated so much mass. If the difference between "one" and "billion" doesn’t matter to you, well, ok then. The difference is even more clear-cut because so-called intermediate mass black holes are something of a question mark. For a long time it wasn’t clear whether they even exist in any significant numbers, and even now the evidence is not especially rock-solid, especially with regard to candidate objects in the Milky Way.
- BobbyTables2 2y agoIt’s quite easy to describe the origin of a supermassive black hole. It was just a stellar black hole that optimized logistics and utilized its gravitational pull to offer free shipping and one click accretion.
- hermitdev 2y agoTo add to a sibling comment, the distinction is important, because observed mass of black holes falls largely into super massive (millions to billions solar masses) to stellar (dozens of solar masses). There is very, very, astonishingly few observed black holes with an intermediate mass. So, how super massive black holes form is a mystery, and finding large stellar mass black holes starts filling in (possibly) that evolutionary gap in black holes. Not a physicist, just read/watch a lot of pop astronomy/cosmology.
- scotty79 3y agoMy bet is that they are older than 14 bln years.
- exe34 3y agoThey're probably not formed by the merger of stellar blackholes.
- denton-scratch 3y agoYeah, that's what I thought. TFA says (unconditionally) that SagA was formed by direct collapse of gas clouds.
- andy_ppp 3y agoAI making too many paperclips again...