A black hole in the Cygnus constellation and its two eerie companions have challenged long-held cosmological understandings.
According to Live Science, scientists have for the first time explored an incredibly strange “trinary” system in the world of stars, with one of them having transformed into a black hole and exhibiting a complex relationship with its two companions.
This discovery stems from the study of the “vampire” black hole V404 Cygni located 7,800 light-years away from Earth in the Cygnus constellation.
The “vampire” black hole V404 Cygni and its companion being gradually consumed – (Graphic: NASA).
V404 Cygni has had a well-known companion for many years, a star that is “dancing” with it in a close orbit of just 6.5 days and is being “devoured” over time.
However, the latest data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission reveals something quite peculiar.
Gaia is mapping the three-dimensional positions of objects in our Milky Way galaxy while specifically recording the direction and velocity of these objects as they move through the galaxy.
V404 Cygni and the seemingly unrelated star are moving through space in the same direction and at the same speed.
The third star in the system (above) accompanies the black hole cluster and the closer companion star – (Photo: ESA).
“It is almost certainly not a coincidence or accident. We are witnessing two stars moving together because they are bound by a weak gravitational tether,” said physicist Kevin Burdge from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a co-author of the study.
This indicates that the mysterious star and the black hole V404 Cygni must belong to the same system, even though they are separated by up to 3,500 astronomical units (AU), which is 3,500 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
An absurdity also arises: If this second companion exists, then the black hole V404 Cygni could not have formed from a supernova explosion.
This challenges existing cosmological theories, as scientists previously believed that stellar-mass black holes formed from the explosive end of a giant star’s life.
Despite orbiting each other with an orbital period of up to 70,000 days, the newly discovered star—which is only weakly bound to the other two objects—would be blown out of the system.
This leads to an intriguing hypothesis: V404 Cygni formed from the gradual collapse of a star.
If formed in this way, this black hole must have started its formation around 4 billion years ago, when its two companions were still “infants.”
