This Black Hole Can't Exist. And There It Is - Newser

(Newser) – A stellar black hole, 70 times the mass of our sun? No way, experts said—and yet, there it is. A group of Chinese-led scientists have spotted this "monster" black hole some 15,000 light-years away and dubbed it LB-1, the Washington Post reports. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," lead scientist Liu Jifeng says in a press release. "...Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation." To grasp that challenge, look at how such black holes are formed. NASA says it happens when big stars expire in a supernova blast that collapses under the force of gravity. The gravitational pull gets so strong that nothing can escape, even light.

But LB-1 seems too massive to be created by a single star—after all, our galaxy's other stellar black holes have just five to 20 times the sun's mass. (That's unlike supermassive black holes, usually at the heart of galaxies, which are way, way, heavier.) Maybe LB-1 was created by two black holes that later captured a star? Or by a "fallback supernova"—a thus-far theoretical notion—in which a dying star ejects only some matter, which falls back in, making a heavier black hole? Both seem possible. Another exciting element is that LB-1 was detected with telescopes, a fairly new way of spotting black holes. All told, a scientist says, the find helps point "towards a renaissance in our understanding of black hole astrophysics." (Meanwhile, there might be an invisible "fifth force" in nature.)

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2019-11-30 22:15:00Z
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Stellar Black Hole in Our Galaxy Is So Massive It Shouldn't Exist - Livescience.com

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1. Stellar Black Hole in Our Galaxy Is So Massive It Shouldn't Exist  Livescience.com
2. Scientists spot black hole so huge it 'shouldn't even exist' in our galaxy  Rappler
3. Massive black hole that 'should not even exist' has been discovered  Yahoo News
4. Black hole discovery: How an 'impossibly' heavy black hole will 'update astronomy books'  Express.co.uk
5. Scientists find ‘monster’ black hole so big they didn’t think it was possible  The Washington Post
6. View full coverage on Google News

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2019-11-30 12:00:00Z
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A 'Mole' Isn't Digging Mars: NASA Engineers Are Trying To Find Out Why - NPR

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A photo of the mole on NASA's InSight lander trying to drill into the Martian surface. NASA hide caption

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NASA

There's a mole on Mars that's making NASA engineers tear their hair out.

No, they haven't discovered a small, insectivorous mammal on the red planet.

The mole vexing engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena is a scientific instrument known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3 — or just "the mole" — carried on NASA's InSight probe that landed on Mars a year ago.

"The mole is designed to measure heat flow coming out of the interior of Mars," says Troy Hudson, InSight's instrument system engineer.

Scientists are interested to know how much heat is still being generated inside the core of the once geologically active Mars. To do that, the mole has to bury itself about 16 feet below the Martian surface so it won't be affected by daily temperature fluctuations.

The mole is basically a tube about 16 inches long and an inch in diameter. It has a pointy tip and an internal hammer that works like a kind of pile driver to pound the instrument into the ground.

The frustrations began last February when the digging started. Instead of going down to 16 feet, it got stuck after just 14 inches.

Hudson says he and his team decided the problem was related to bouncing.

Just like a gun recoils when you fire it, the mole recoiled ever so slightly every time the hammer tried to drive it into the ground. So instead of going down, it bounced in place.

Some of the problem may be caused by uncertainty about the size of the grains of Martian sand. It turns out that pushing a probe into something like flour is very different than pushing it into a bowl of granulated sugar.

The low pressure on Mars also changes the way the dirt behaves compared to soil on Earth.

Engineers thought they might be able to prevent the bouncing if they used the scoop on InSight's robotic arm to press against the mole as it hammered. They tried that a few weeks ago — and it worked.

"For the first time in 8 months we have definite forward progress," Hudson told NPR at the time.

But Hudson knew there was another looming problem. Eventually, the top of the mole would be flush with the Martian surface, and there would be nothing for the scoop to press against.

So they came up with a new plan.

"We moved the scoop over to a different position nearby, and pushed hard on the soil, hoping that would transfer force to the mole through the soil rather than directly," he says.

They sent instructions for the scoop to press, the mole to hammer, and for Insight's camera to record what happened.

Hudson says he was horrified when he saw the pictures.

Credit: NASA

"I was very distraught," he recalls.

The mole had backed almost half-way out of the hole, inadvertently undoing much of their progress.

Hudson is pretty sure he knows what happened. Without the scoop pressing on the mole, it started bouncing again.

"When it does that, loose soil in front of the mole can infiltrate in front of the tip, filling up the space that occurs whenever it bounces," Hudson says. "Then it's just bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, and more material fills in and it ends up backing out of the ground."

Hudson says he and his team are confident they can use the scoop press technique to get the mole back down to where it was. They've already made an inch and a half of progress.

Once the top of the Mole is again flush with the surface, he says "we're going to have to come up with a new way to get it underground fully and we haven't figured out exactly what we're going to do there, yet."

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2019-11-29 13:16:00Z
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Chinese astronomers discovered a black hole so big it shouldn't exist according to current science - Business Insider

An artist's impression of the LB-1 black hole, recently discovered by Chinese scientists.YU Jingchuan, Beijing Planetarium, 2019.

• Chinese scientists discovered a stellar black hole that's so large it shouldn't exist based on current theories of black hole formation.
• LB-1 is 70 times greater than the mass of our sun, but scientists had believed that stellar black holes in our galaxy could not be bigger than 20 times the mass of the sun.
• The head of the team that made the discovery said that: "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our Galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution."
• Prof. David Reitze of the University of Florida said: "This discovery forces us to re-examine our models of how stellar-mass black holes form."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Chinese scientists discovered a black hole so that's so big that it throws into question previous beliefs about how black holes are formed.

The newly discovered black hole, called LB-1, has a mass 70 times greater than the mass of our sun, China's Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

The statement noted that scientists had previously believed that an individual stellar black hole — formed when a star collapses — that's in our galaxy could only weigh as much as 20 times the mass of our sun.

This is because they believed that stars start to lose their gas as they die, and lose mass as a result. 

However, Professor Liu Jifeng of the National Astronomical Observatory of China, who led the team who made the discovery, said that LB-1, under this theory, was too big to exist.

"Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our Galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution."

"LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation," he said.

"We thought that very massive stars with the chemical composition typical of our Galaxy must shed most of their gas in powerful stellar winds, as they approach the end of their life. Therefore, they should not leave behind such a massive remnant."

LB-1 is 15,000 light years from Earth.

This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole’s event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object’s gravitational grip.NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)

The discovery was published in the scientific journal Nature on Wednesday. The black hole was discovered by looking at stars that were being pulled in by an invisible object instead of the usual technique of looking at the x-rays emitted by a black hole, which not all black holes emit.

The University of Florida's Prof. David Reitze, the director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, said in the news releaseL "This discovery forces us to re-examine our models of how stellar-mass black holes form."

According to CNN, the Chinese team suggested multiple reasons why the black hole is so big, including the suggestion that it could have been formed by the collapse of more than one star.

CNN also noted that other black holes that are larger than LB-1 have been discovered, like supermassive black holes, but that LB-1 is the largest of its kind.

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2019-11-29 12:14:47Z
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Scientists have discovered a 'monster' black hole that's so big it shouldn't exist - CNN

It's a stellar black hole — the type that forms after stars die, collapse, and explode. Researchers had previously believed that the size limit was no more than 20 times the mass of our sun because as these stars die, they lose most of their mass through explosions that expel matter and gas swept away by stellar winds.

This theory has now been toppled by LB-1, the newly-discovered black hole. Located about 15,000 light years away, it has a mass 70 times greater than our sun, according to a press release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The findings were published by Chinese researchers in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

"Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, head of the team that made the discovery. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."

Scientists are now scratching their heads at how LB-1 got so huge.

The Chinese team has proposed a number of theories. LB-1's sheer size suggests that it "was not formed from the collapse of only one star," the study said -- instead, it could potentially be two smaller black holes orbiting each other.

Another possibility is that it formed from a "fallback supernova." This is when a supernova -- the last stage of an exploding star -- ejects material during the explosion, which then falls back into the supernova, creating a black hole.

This fallback formation is theoretically possible, but scientists have never been able to prove or observe it. If this is how LB-1 formed, then we may have "direct evidence for this process" for the first time, the study said.

LB-1 is not the biggest black hole ever discovered -- but it may be the largest of its kind. There are several types of black holes, and stellar black holes like LB-1 are on the smaller side, according to NASA. Supermassive black holes are much bigger -- they can be billions of times the mass of our sun.

Scientists believe supermassive black holes may be connected to the formation of galaxies, as they often exist at the center of the massive star systems -- but it is still not clear exactly how, or which form first.

Stellar renaissance

Stellar black holes are believed to be commonly scattered across the universe, but they are difficult to detect because they do not normally emit X-rays -- only doing so when they gobble up gas from a star that has ventured close enough. They are so elusive that scientists have only found, identified, and measured about two dozen stellar black holes, the press release said.

The researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences tried a different approach. Instead of looking for X-rays emitted by black holes, the team looked for stars that were orbiting some invisible object, being pulled in by its gravity.

Their efforts paid off -- they soon spotted a giant star eight times heavier than the sun, orbiting around what turned out to be LB-1.

"This discovery forces us to re-examine our models of how stellar-mass black holes form," said David Reitze, a physicist at the University of Florida. In May, Reitze's team made its own breakthrough discovery -- observing the never-before-seen collision of a neutron star and a black hole, which sent out ripples in space and time.

These twin discoveries -- the collision, and now LB-1 -- indicate that scientists are reaching "a renaissance in our understanding of black hole astrophysics," said Reitze in the press release.

There have been several other discoveries over the past year that have added to this renaissance. In October, researchers discovered what they believe to be a new type of black hole, smaller than the other kinds. And earlier this week, astronomers discovered a black hole that is actually helping baby stars grow instead of destroying them.

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2019-11-29 11:04:00Z
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Scientists have discovered a 'monster' black hole that's so big it shouldn't exist - CNN

It's a stellar black hole — the type that forms after stars die, collapse, and explode. Researchers had previously believed that the size limit was no more than 20 times the mass of our sun because as these stars die, they lose most of their mass through explosions that expel matter and gas swept away by stellar winds.

This theory has now been toppled by LB-1, the newly-discovered black hole. Located about 15,000 light years away, it has a mass 70 times greater than our sun, according to a press release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The findings were published by Chinese researchers in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

"Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, head of the team that made the discovery. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."

Scientists are now scratching their heads at how LB-1 got so huge.

The Chinese team has proposed a number of theories. LB-1's sheer size suggests that it "was not formed from the collapse of only one star," the study said -- instead, it could potentially be two smaller black holes orbiting each other.

Another possibility is that it formed from a "fallback supernova." This is when a supernova -- the last stage of an exploding star -- ejects material during the explosion, which then falls back into the supernova, creating a black hole.

This fallback formation is theoretically possible, but scientists have never been able to prove or observe it. If this is how LB-1 formed, then we may have "direct evidence for this process" for the first time, the study said.

LB-1 is not the biggest black hole ever discovered -- but it may be the largest of its kind. There are several types of black holes, and stellar black holes like LB-1 are on the smaller side, according to NASA. Supermassive black holes are much bigger -- they can be billions of times the mass of our sun.

Scientists believe supermassive black holes may be connected to the formation of galaxies, as they often exist at the center of the massive star systems -- but it is still not clear exactly how, or which form first.

Stellar renaissance

Stellar black holes are believed to be commonly scattered across the universe, but they are difficult to detect because they do not normally emit X-rays -- only doing so when they gobble up gas from a star that has ventured close enough. They are so elusive that scientists have only found, identified, and measured about two dozen stellar black holes, the press release said.

The researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences tried a different approach. Instead of looking for X-rays emitted by black holes, the team looked for stars that were orbiting some invisible object, being pulled in by its gravity.

Their efforts paid off -- they soon spotted a giant star eight times heavier than the sun, orbiting around what turned out to be LB-1.

"This discovery forces us to re-examine our models of how stellar-mass black holes form," said David Reitze, a physicist at the University of Florida. In May, Reitze's team made its own breakthrough discovery -- observing the never-before-seen collision of a neutron star and a black hole, which sent out ripples in space and time.

These twin discoveries -- the collision, and now LB-1 -- indicate that scientists are reaching "a renaissance in our understanding of black hole astrophysics," said Reitze in the press release.

There have been several other discoveries over the past year that have added to this renaissance. In October, researchers discovered what they believe to be a new type of black hole, smaller than the other kinds. And earlier this week, astronomers discovered a black hole that is actually helping baby stars grow instead of destroying them.

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2019-11-29 08:57:00Z
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Thanksgiving in Space: For Astronauts, It's a Cosmic Friendsgiving! - Space.com

They may be circling hundreds of miles above the United States, but the three American residents of the International Space Station have a plan to celebrate Thanksgiving.

"It's all about the togetherness, but not necessarily the commercialism," said Christina Koch, who is spending nearly a year in space, in a NASA video Monday (Nov. 25). 

"In recent years," she added, "I've come to love 'Friendsgiving', and that's a little like what we're having on board here ... although you can say that we're family, too."

Related: Here's What Astronauts Will Eat for Thanksgiving Today
More: Thanksgiving Night Sky 2019: See Venus, Jupiter & the Moon Together!

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (left), Christina Koch (center) and Andrew Morgan will celebrate a "Friendsgiving" in space for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on the International Space Station this Nov. 28, 2019. (Image credit: NASA TV)

U.S. astronauts Koch, Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan are just half of the population in space right now, forging strong bonds through recent tasks such as ongoing complicated repairs of a dark-matter experiment and conducting the first all-woman spacewalk. 

Also on board the space station are two Russians (Aleksandr Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka) and an Italian (Luca Parmitano). The Americans said they are eager to share the U.S. holiday with their friends, most especially including the food.

The three NASA astronauts on board the station, @Astro_Christina, @Astro_Jessica and @AstroDrewMorgan, share what #Thanksgiving means to them and get a look at what the holiday in space will be like in 2019. pic.twitter.com/fEgZIHIrf7November 25, 2019

"When we think of Thanksgiving, we think of friends, family and food," Morgan said, as his crewmates dug below their floating feet to bring out a cornucopia of space food for the Thanksgiving holiday. The astronauts grabbed the packets out of the air and explained their contents. Among them were vegetables, green beans, macaroni and cheese (just needs water!), cornbread and of course, smoked turkey.

More: NASA's Recipe for Space Corn Bread Dressing

"I want to know who's going to carve the turkey after it comes out of that pouch," Koch joked. The crew may also come up with a way to create their own pumpkin pie out of supplies on board, including cookies, she hinted. (Their full menu will be shared on the NASA website soon.)

Meir, the daughter of American immigrants, recalled Thanksgivings she had as a child: "I grew up in a family with five kids, and as first-generation Americans, I guess my parents had to learn pretty quick how to put on a great Thanksgiving feast."

As she got older, she added, she "lived in various places" and has enjoyed Thanksgiving with "adopted families all over the country." 

This year, her Thanksgiving celebration will be literally out of this world.

Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Need more space? Subscribe to our sister title "All About Space" Magazine for the latest amazing news from the final frontier! (Image credit: All About Space)

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2019-11-28 12:38:00Z
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