Scientists thought it was impossible for a black hole to have a mass larger than 20x that of the sun. But this 'monster' black hole is 70x. And it's inside our own galaxy
Before now, scientists did not think it was possible for a stellar black hole to have a mass larger than 20 times that of the sun, an approximation based on their understanding of the way stars evolve and die in the Milky Way.
"Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our Galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," Liu Jifeng, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of China, said in a news release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."
LB-1 was discovered by China's Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope , which has provided scientists with a new way to find the estimated 100 million black holes in the Milky Way. LAMOST enables researchers to detect black holes by first tracking stars that are orbiting something invisible to more than the naked eye, such as a black hole.
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