Weird Black Hole's Incredible Brightness Perplexes Scientists - Space.com

Weird Black Hole's Incredible Brightness Perplexes Scientists
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer - Space.com
November 27, 2013 01:00pm ET


Artist's conception of an ultraluminous X-ray source consisting of a small black hole and a nearby companion star. Credit: Jingchuan Yu

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A black-hole system in a neighboring galaxy is twice as bright as astronomers had thought possible, a new study reports.

The incredible luminosity of the system in question, which resides about 22 million light-years from Earth in the Pinwheel Galaxy, may force a rethink of the theories that explain how some black holes radiate energy, researchers said.

"As if black holes weren’t extreme enough, this is a really extreme one that is shining as brightly as it possibly can," study co-author Joel Bregman of the University of Michigan said in a statement. "It’s figured out a way to be more luminous than we thought possible."

The astronomers studied a system called ULX-1, which consists of a black hole and a companion star that orbit each other. As its name suggests — ULX is short for "ultraluminous X-ray source" — ULX-1 generates prodigious amounts of high-energy X-ray light, which is emitted by material spiraling down into the black hole's maw.

This light is so intense, in fact, that astronomers had suspected that ULX-1 contains an intermediate-mass black hole — one that harbors between 100 and 1,000 times the mass of the sun. But the new study suggests that the black hole is actually on the small side...

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More: http://www.space.com/23755-black-hole-brightness-mystery.html