Astronomers have spotted something rather big and black in outer space.
LB-1 is a black hole so huge that it has researches questioning everything they know about how stars evolve.
The black hole is more than 15,000 lightyears away from Earth (which is plenty far away from us) and has more than 70-times the mass of our Sun. While the Milky Way supposedly has more than 100 million black holes, LB-1 is twice the size of anything scientists previously thought possible.
According to Liu Jifeng, a National Observatory of China professor who led the research, LB-1 shouldn’t even be possible:
“Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution.”
“Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation,” he said in a statement.
Scientists generally agree that there are two types of black hole – the more common ones are around 20-times bigger than our sun and created when the centre of a star collapses on itself. Supermassive black holes are at least a million times bigger than the sun, and now their origins are uncertain.
According to science, this is only the most recent black hole phenomenon that has researchers scratching their heads, as new technology has led to the finding of vastly more than ever seen before.
-1080x900.jpg)
