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BLACK HOLE scientists are animatedly analysing the potential detection of a black hole so huge is mass has hitherto believed to be physically impossible.
A black hole is an extreme region ofspace-timefeaturing gravitational acceleration so powerful nothing – even light – can escape. Now the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have reportedly observed the signal of an shockingly massive black hole. A gravitational wave detection is speculated to be the result of a cosmic collision involving a black hole of extraordinary size — reportedly as heavy as 100 suns.
However LIGO Virgo scientists have so far refused to confirm nor deny the purported detection, which was considered to be physically impossible.
We know nature often finds a way
Professor Stan Woosley
Professor Stan Woosley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, told Quanta Magazine: “The prediction is no black holes, not even a few” in this mass range.
“But of course we know nature often finds a way.”
Hebrew University in Jerusalem physicists realised in 1967 a dying star’s core will not gravitationally collapse into a black hole when it is very heavy.
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Black hole: LIGO and Virgo scientists have so far refused to confirm nor deny the detection(Image: Getty)
Black holes: The extreme entity is reportedly as heavy as 100 Suns(Image: Getty/Express)
The star will instead undergo a “pair-instability supernova,” an explosion capable of almost immediately annihilating it.
A pair-instability supernova occurs when the core grows so hot that light transforms into electron-positron pairs.
The light’s radiation pressure had kept the star’s core intact; when the light transforms into matter, the resulting pressure drop causes the core to rapidly shrink and become even hotter, further accelerating pair production and triggering a domino effect.
Eventually the core gets so hot that oxygen ignites, reversing the core’s implosion into an explosion.
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For cores with a mass between about 65 and 130 times the sun’s size will likely see the star totally destroyed.
Cores between about 50 and 65 solar masses pulsate, shedding mass in a succession of explosions until they drop below the range where pair instability occurs.
This means there should be no black holes with masses in the 50-to-130-solar-mass range.
Black holes can exist on the other side of the mass gap, weighing in at more than 130 solar masses, because the runaway implosion of such heavy stellar cores cannot be stopped, instead, they continue to collapse and form black holes.
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Black hole: There should be no black holes with masses in the 50-to-130-solar-mass range(Image: Getty)
Black hole: The Event Horizon Telescope captured a black hole at the galaxy M87’s centre(Image: Getty)
However, because stars shed mass throughout their lives, a star would need to be born weighing at least 300 suns in order to end up as a 130-solar-mass core, and ones this size are rare.
For this reason, most experts assumed the size ceiling of black holes detected by LIGO and Virgo would be 50 solar masses, the lower end of the mass gap.
The million and billion-solar-mass supermassive black holes anchoring galaxies’ centres formed by a different process in the nascent universe.
LIGO and Virgo are incapable of detecting the collisions of such supermassive black holes.
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