Monster Black Hole Busts Theory

Genocaust writes "A stellar black hole much more massive than theory predicts is possible has astronomers puzzled. Stellar black holes form when stars with masses around 20 times that of the sun collapse under the weight of their own gravity at the ends of their lives. Most stellar black holes weigh in at around 10 solar masses when the smoke blows away, and computer models of star evolution have difficulty producing black holes more massive than this. 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."

Comments

Supermassive black holes

[Raul654]

If theory says that black holes beyond 10 solar masses cannot form, how do they explain the conjectured supermassive black holes at the center of our and other galaxies?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[RuBLed]

It seems that they are in separate divisions/classes. This should explain it.

While 16 solar masses is hefty for a stellar black hole, it is miniscule compared with the black holes thought to lie in the heart of many large galaxies. Such "supermassive" black holes have masses millions to billions times that of our sun, but they are thought to form by mechanisms different from the stellar variety.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[shawn(at)fsu]

They mentioned that in the article. Mister Scientist thinks their are different mechacisms at work that produce the super massive black holes at the centre of galaxies. I was wondering though, is it possible that a black hole of this mass could me produces in a trinary solar system where two black holes merge, in this case leaving you with a 16 solar masses and orbiting the remain star?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ILuvRamen]

I was thinking the same thing. And you know how they get that big? By forming and then sucking up tons and stars around them. And who says this one didn't form differently? It's in a binary system now but trinary systems exist. And don't say "but it didn't suck up 6 stars." They just said in the article that some stars can be 20 solar masses. That's a really badly named unit lol.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[StikyPad]

If theory says that black holes beyond 10 solar masses cannot form, how do they explain the conjectured supermassive black holes

Like This.

Or, more pedantically, black holes may never form at all from the point of view of an observer outside the event horizon.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Tablizer]

Agreed, that is an oddity in the story. However, I think it works like this. OUTSIDE of the center of galaxies, stars don't collide very often. Black holes have no more mass than the stars they came from (usually less because lots explode into space), and even big stars don't hit other stars very often at all. And, large stars are fairly rare, most are medium (sun-like) and smaller, reducing chances of large collisions even further. (Having lots of gravity improves collision chances a bit, but not significantly.)

Thus, the chances of two black holes colliding to make larger holes is quite unlikely outside the center. So, if non-center holes are from large stars and large stars have an upper limit of around 10 suns when they collapse, then where do the bigger ones come (15+) from?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[jd]

What if you have an n-ary system in which two or more supermassive stars are sufficiently close together that after the supernova, the total mass exceeds 10 solar masses even though no individual star did? (Since the star cores would merge at the common center of gravity, they would behave as a single remnant of the combined mass, NOT as individual collapsing objects.) Alternatively, if the black hole forms in a regular fashion but is in a dense enough zone - or a zone that has an obscenely large number of extra-solar supermassive planets - that it absorbs six or more solar masses before it can evaporate a comparable amount of mass, you'd reach the desired mass. Thirdly, my guess is that all simulations assume point singularities (probably the most common kind, assuming black hole theory is correct), which means that they won't be including Kerr Ring singularities or any of the other Really Weird Forms that have been predicted.

I'm sure that there are ways to fudge things so that the desired mass can be reached. Or, there again, the simulations could be wrong. That happens, for all that Michael Fish wishes otherwise. Well, maybe not. He stands to make a lot of money from his new book because of that fiasco.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Tablizer]

I was wondering though, is it possible that a black hole of this mass could me produces in a trinary solar system where two black holes merge, in this case leaving you with a 16 solar masses and orbiting the remain star?

If I am not mistaken, the largest stars tend not to be binary/trinary. Once the mass gets past a certain point, it upsets the harmonics needed to make doubles and triples. However, I can't find any verification of this mentally rusty snippet of info.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

Just FYI: after binary comes TERNARY, not trinary. Don't feel bad, though, it's a very common mistake which I myself have made before being corrected.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Junior J. Junior III]

*Stellar* black holes are black holes that originate from the aftermath of a single star going supernova.

Super-massive black holes like what exist at the center of a galaxy don't have a well understood origin, but it is supposed that if a black hole is created in a region of space with a great deal of matter in the vicinity, it may gobble up a lot of it, adding to its mass until it becomes super-massive.

A stellar black hole that's so big it shouldn't be possible for it to have been created by the usual supernova, and in a region of space sufficiently vacant to rule out the gobbling theory, is what is being puzzled over.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[nospam007]

Just like us, stellar black holes are getting fatter, they need a diet.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[dwater]

> their are

you misspelled 'arse'.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ozbird]

A stellar black hole that's so big it shouldn't be possible for it to have been created by the usual supernova, and in a region of space sufficiently vacant to rule out the gobbling theory, is what is being puzzled over.

The region of space is vacant now - it doesn't mean that it was when the black hole was feeling peckish.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[gomiam]

Reading the article, it seems that the computer models of supernovas would strip all those supermassive planets of their gaseous layers, if not blow the planets themselves away. The problem isn't the black hole being that big (that's a symptom), the problem is how do you make a star go nova "softly" like this one would have done.

And, yes, it seems the simulations are wrong. That's why it's hard for the current nova theories (read models) to create a black hole this big.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[the.Ceph]

IANAAP(I am not an astro physicist) but my understanding of it is that black holes give off a form of radiation called Hawking Radiation. As Hawking Radiation escapes the black hole its mass slowly decreases because (E=mc^2 etc). Eventually the black hole will radiate all of its mass and will have essentially evaporated.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Frank Battaglia]

Likely they are referring to Hawking Radiation.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[bombastinator]

Nah. It's a reasonable question. "stellar" is not necessarily generally thought of as a term of finite measurement outside of Academia.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[chthon]

Wouldn't it be : In Soviet Russia, you eat black holes ?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[osu-neko]

Yes, it's extremely hard to figure out how what you just said could possibly happen. If it was a ternary system, that means the three stars were in stable orbits. One forms a black hole. If no mass were lost, everything would remain in the same stable orbits. If mass were lost (which is almost certainly the case -- supernovas tend to throw off a lot of mass), then the star that becomes a black hole now has *less* grip on its companions than it did. If it doesn't lose them entirely, they should at least shift into more distant orbits. When a star becomes a black hole, it becomes much LESS likely to gobble up its neighbors. If it didn't gobble them up before it collapsed into a black hole, it almost certainly isn't going to do so afterwards.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

Perhaps because the mass of our Sun is a variable, as is the mass of other stars. Matter falls in, matter gets expelled. Today a star might be 3 solar masses, tomorrow it might be 2.999999999999999999999999999999999976 solar masses. That sort of wild, erratic variation is no good in the exact world of astronomy.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Oktober Sunset]

No, if they were making a joke, they would have mentioned the supermassive black hole shown at goatse.cx, which is far bigger than most nerds thought possible.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[anno1602]

An alternative explanation is that the supermassive black hole might have formed directly. On formation, so much mass accumulated so quickly that it directly collapsed into a black hole, bypassing the star stage entirely.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ultranova]

Wouldn't it be : In Soviet Russia, you eat black holes ?

Well, seeing how both people and goods had a habit of disappearing and never being seen again in Soviet Russia, I'd say that both forms are correct. I wonder if that reflects some deep, underlaying symmetry in the Laws of Politics ?

As an interesting aside, the light emitted near the event horizon of a black hole experiences red shift as it climbs up the gravitational field, and the Soviet Russia's flag is... red. Does that mean that Soviet Russia was a black hole, eating both people and material, and has now evaporated ?

Re:Supermassive black holes

[ZombieWomble]

That's something of a misleading post - while a "one second" black hole would indeed release such a huge amount of energy, the creation of such a black hole is unthinkable in the LHC: The energy the protons collide with is around 14TeV, or about 10^-6 joules. That's more than a billion billion billion times lower than the one second black hole you suggest in your post. The size of black holes produced in CERN would dissipate almost instantly, with a relatively small puff of particles.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[digitig]

Isn't it funny how we don't even capitalize "black hole?" Why would we? I can't think of any of the standard capitalisation rules that would apply. Unless your name happens to be Black Holes.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Chapter80]

Just FYI: after binary comes TERNARY, not trinary

Regarding base-2, I've seen posts that don't talk about it, and posts that contain the term "binary".

Regarding base-3, I've seen posts that don't talk about it, and posts that use the term "trinary", and posts that use the term "ternary".

Seems about right...

Re:Supermassive black holes

[octal666]

I think laws of physics are the same inside and outside of Soviet Russia, no joke here, move along.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, you eat black holes In Russia, black holes are referred to as 'frozen stars', because 'black hole' in Russian is a slang term referring to the anus. Which leads to a rather unintentional interpretation of your post.

Re:Supermassive black holes

[Dragonslicer]

So, for instance, a 1 second-lived black hole has a mass of 2.28 × 10^5 kg Which means that in order to create such a black hole, we'd have to be able to cram 10^5 kg of mass into a singularity. That's a pretty small mass in the realm of astronomy, but it's a pretty damned big mass in the realm of particle physics.

In the Dark

[ArcherB]

I wonder if this is where all that "dark matter" is. Scientist keep talking about how there is so much more matter than what we can detect. Well, we haven't been able to detect this until now. How much more is missing, I wonder.

It amazes me at how much we DON'T know.

Re:In the Dark

[ArcherB]

Technically, there is a difference between dark matter and and matter so dense its dark. Think of dark matter as "matters at hand in the universe in which we're still in the dark." On second though, "terra incognita" is a much better analogy.

Well, I wasn't talking about black holes being made from dark matter, but like you said, matter we were "in the dark" about or matter than we are unable to detect. Well, evidently, we were in the dark of about 75% of the matter than can exist in black holes. It wasn't until recently that we learned of super massive black holes in the center of every galaxy. All this is matter that we were in the dark about. How many more black holes are there that we don't know about? How much larger are they than we thought they could be? How much more stuff is out there that we can't detect that is perfectly reasonable, easily explained and not at all weird or mysterious, for example solar systems where the center body is simply not big enough to start the fusion process and thus remains dark and unknown to us?

I just keep hearing how dark matter is this uber-mysterious stuff that makes up a majority of the universe and we have no idea what it is. Well, maybe it's something simple like the examples I gave above.

Re:In the Dark

[value_added]

It amazes me at how much we DON'T know.

The following may help to explain things (taken from an Slashdot post):

Indeed. In fact there is no light either. The Sun sucks dark. In fact it
sucks dark so hard that the friction of the dark moving to the Sun
causes the Sun to be very hot. The flow of dark towards the Sun
interrupted by the Earth causes the side of the Earth away from the Sun
to accumulate dark, thus causing Night. As the Earth rotates the dark
caught on the night side can then be pulled off, this causing the
absence of dark known as Day.

What we call light bulbs are truly dark suckers as well. That is why
light bulbs are hot, just like the Sun. When a light bulb is full of
dark and won't suck dark any more, it cools off. If you look in old
light bulbs you can even seen the accumulation of dark.

Dark is also heavier than water. This can be seen in the oceans where
the deeper you go the darker it gets.

Re:black holes

[Cassius Corodes]

Yes - 1's should always appear after the exclamation mark not in the middle.

A giant black hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

They should name it Goatse.

sturgeon's law redux

[Speare]

Sturgeon's Law (paraphrased): 90% of everything sucks.

Just goes to show, that when you think it can't suck any worse, you find it can suck a LOT worse.

Residents of companion star get bad rap....

[robinsonne]

It orbits a companion star in the spiral galaxy Messier 33

It's not messy, it's got a lived-in, homey feel to it you insensitive clod!!!

Simple solution!

[glwtta]

The extra mass is Dark Mass, right?

After all, that's how we deal with all cosmological phenomena we don't understand - prefix it with "Dark" and you're all set!

Computer models of Supernovae

[confused_demon]

For this discussion it's worth keeping in mind that current computer models have real problems actually getting supernovae to explode. At one point it was so bad that I heard someone say, "If it weren't for the fact that we occasionally observe one explode, I would assure you that they cannot." It's only been in the last couple of years that someone has made a computer model that actually did it.

Re:Computer models of Supernovae

[Leperous]

"It's only been in the last couple of years that someone has made a computer model that actually did it."

Not true. As a numerical relativitist, I can tell you that no decent 3D simulations of supernovae currently exist.

Half the problem is that the physics is simply unknown - is it sufficient for your model to contain rotation, magnetic fields, and what about the equation of state of the plasma? Neutrinos are also thought to play an incredibly important role in the supernova explosion mechanism, and subsequent nucleosynthesis (and other processes) that go on during the supernova event itself. The other half is the sheer computing power to evolve your equations over decent time scales with enough resolution, not to mention making sure the numerical methods you employ work.

There are plenty of groups who are currently working towards 3D evolutions without any neutrino transport, and I think some people have done neutrinos in 1D. Try checking out some of the work by Leibendorfer, for example.

A quick run down of the supernova event though, since the article skims over it very lightly: heavy elements gradually build up at the core (nickel and iron especially), and nuclear fusion shuts down due to their high binding energies. As a result, outwards pressure ("thermal support") is lost, and at some critical moment the core will rapidly collapse onto itself (on a timescale of less than a second) as gravity becomes the dominant force. The outer layers will also in-fall onto this collapsing core.

Depending on the mass of the star, we'd expect the core to collapse into some kind of 'proto' neutron star, or straight into a black hole, if it's massive enough. In the case of the former, neutrinos escaping from the cooling central proto neutron star deposit energy into the outer layers, and drive the actual supernova explosion-event. In the case of the latter, I'm not sure that you'd actually see much of a supernova since neutrinos wouldn't be able to escape from a black hole - or at least the explosion mechanism would be different. There is an 'intermediate' option though: a proto neutron star that later on collapses into a black hole, from the still in-falling outer layers. If this happens you'd expect both a black hole, and pretty violent supernova to boot.

I'm not sure about the numbers presented in the article either. Typically, stars above 8 solar masses will collapse and create a supernova and neutron star remnant. Stars over 20 solar masses should form a neutron star which later collapses into a black hole (as is the case here). Stars over 50 solar masses or so will probably just collapse straight into a black hole, with unknown supernova mechanisms.

Re:Computer models of Supernovae

[confused_demon]

The presentation that was made recently by the scientific director for NIF at LBNL included references to simulations which actually had supernovae exploding. One of them was particularly interesting because it included a 'natural' asymmetry (as in it came from the model without having to be included artificially).

I'm well aware that a lot of the information that astrophysicists want to know have huge uncertainties. I'm involved in making those measurements.

The internet has ruined my mind.

[game kid]

Never mind things like Goatse. Thanks to the internet, the only word in the title that doesn't yet have dirty connotations to me is "theory".

Heck, some are working to change that too.

So much for science!

[__aailob1448]

Well, science has been vainquished, therefore proving the existence of God once and for all.

  But...

ONCE AND FOR ALL!

hmm

[thatskinnyguy]

One black hole consumes another black hole creating one gigantic gravitational singularity. Case closed.

Re:hmm

[Kingrames]

your black hole theory sucks.

Re:hmm

[thatskinnyguy]

Sometimes the correct and simple explanations are overlooked in favor of more complicated, yet impressive-sounding wrong ones.

Pairs don't merge very often

[Tablizer]

Another issue is the unlikely chance of paired stars crashing into each other. After one partner blows its top at the end of life, it usually loses some mass such that the distance between them INcreases, making them even less likely to touch or enter friction zones. (Being a black hole by itself does not increase its gravitational pull over a star of the same mass). If they are going to merge, they would more likely do so during the regular life, and we'd see samples of such massive stars. But we don't, mainly because there is an upper limit to the size of a stable star.

Further, large stars have short lives, meaning that the time for friction to rub them closer to each other is shorter.

However, it is true that a collision of two big mid-life stars may itself trigger a supernova because the total mass exceeds a stable size, and thus a very large black hole is formed. This may result in a black hole that *looks* like it came from a star larger than the max stable size of a star because its exceeding the stable limit itself is what triggered the formation of the hole. In short, there may be a limit to stable star size, but not to unstable star size.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[ceoyoyo]

Black holes don't produce x-rays, but the material falling into them does produce x-rays which, since they're produced outside the black hole, can escape.

Re:x-rays aren't light? Or... wait a sec!

[galt23]

Words like "produce" and "consume" are bad science words. Mostly used in docudrama style tv shows and movies using snippets of science to achieve an end goal: make more money by scaring the crap out of people. Black holes do not EMIT xrays, or anything else that we know of (although they must be emitting something if you believe like Hawking, that black holes can and do lose mass and eventually dissipate) . Xrays are EMITTED by material (gases) falling into a black hole, being heated as they move and gain density. The additional energy the gas absorbs is enough to have it shoot off in an almost plasma jet fashion. Technically we can not and never will be able to "see" as in observe visible light reflecting off of a black hole and having it be observed with our retina. The only way we can detect a black hole is by: observing occulations of stars/galaxies either in the visible or xray spectrums; calculating masses of quasars or galaxies based on rotational speeds and observed mass index; or touching it and falling in. It's only a matter of semantics though. We see things all the time without having to actually be hit by reflected light; a person walking across a dark room, slightly obscuring the light from the window comes to mind.

Beautiful Katamari

[Osty]

I blame the King of All Cosmos and his damned tennis racquet. Time to start rolling up all your junk.

Upgrade computer used for models...

[fahrbot-bot]

...computer models of star evolution have difficulty producing black holes more massive than this...

Perhaps they need to upgrade to another OS better optimized for modeling black holes... Unless they're saving this for modeling those super-massive ones.

Supermassive gaseous layers exploding softly

[bombastinator]

Could someone else here who also knows nothing about stellar physics read this thread and tell me it does not all sound like some weird double entendre fart joke?

Re:Supermassive gaseous layers exploding softly

[gomiam]

That would be expected when talking about black holes and explosions.

Re:Supermassive gaseous layers exploding softly

[bombastinator]

Thank you. It's good that someone understands.

I noticed the oldnews tag attached...

[mark-t]

... to this story and I couldn't help but agree.

After all, with it being 2.7 million light years away, we certainly know that this story couldn't have been breaking news any later than the end of the last great ice age.