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Birth of Black Hole Possibly Being Observed

Posted by michael on from the hole-in-the-middle-of-it-all dept.

TheTXLibra writes "Robert Roy Britt reports on Space.com that we may now be witnessing the earliest stages of black hole development. Star SN 1986J, began to collapse in 1983 into a neutron star, resulting in a supernova explosion in 1986. If the mass of the neutron star reaches 1.4 times the mass of Earth's Sun, it will theoretically collapse into a black hole, if not, it will stabilize as a neutron star."

4 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Holes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Aren't they really gravastars rather than holes? Why do people still call them black holes?

  2. Interesting and monumental! by Alizarin+Erythrosin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not only is it a cool picture, but this is a pretty interesting thing to witness. In my initial reaction I thought "How can we see this in our lifetimes?" It seems that, as mentioned in the article, "[t]his collapse is extremely fast, and the core collapses into a neutron star in about one second."

    The collapse into a black hole in such a short time (also in the article) is somewhat expected, because the gravity will be so strong. This should be a pretty neat and real way to verify if our view on black hole formation and the associated astro-physics that accompany it are mostly correct.

    --
    There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
    1. Re:Interesting and monumental! by CodeMonkey4Hire · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Keep in mind that we are not seeing the formation of a black hole (or neutron star). That was obscured by the supernova remnants. What we [maybe] are now seeing is the youngest black hole (or neutron star) that we have ever observed. 20 years old is barely out of the womb in cosmological terms, but we missed the birth. The only reason that we are getting to see it this early is that we are fortunate enough to line up with a "crack" in the expanding shell of supernova remnants.

      Still, very awesome. It will definitely help us with our understanding of supernovas and their aftermath.

      It would be really incredible if we could ever find a star that was about to supernova. It would be the most outrageous luck to find it and observe it up until the instant of supernova (I am afraid that we will never get to see the first couple years after that.)

      --

      Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
  3. Re:The Nature of Probability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    In your example we assume that it's 1/6 because there are six sides on the die because the only factor we know is that it has six sides and we assume that it will land with one side facing up. We don't know if the die's mass is assymetrical so that it tends to land with the same side down. We don't know if there's something about the surface that we are using that might cause it to land one way or another. We don't know if the surface is uneven so that the die could come to rest with an edge facing up. We don't know which side is up while it's being held and we don't know if there's something about how it is released that will predispose it to land in a certain way.

    Since all we know is that the die has six sides we can simplify it to say that the odds are 1 in 6. And since we believe that there are two possible outcomes for this star, we assume that the odds are 1 in 2.