Is it Really a Black Hole?

Just in case you have been on Mars and did not hear the news … there has been an announcement that we might have found a young Black Hole … born only 31 years ago in a mege-explosion … here is the picture …

This composite image shows a supernova within the galaxy M100 that just might contain the youngest known black hole in our cosmic neighborhood. In this image, Chandra’s X-rays are colored gold, while optical data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope are shown in red, green, and blue, and infrared data from Spitzer are red.

So what exactly is all the excitement here? … well in this Galaxy that is far far away (50 Million light years to be precise), there was once upon a time a supernova called 1979c (now, can you possibly guess when this was observed … hint, the name gives you a very subtle clue) … so when this star blew up, it was (in theory) just about big enough to form a black hole, so here we are now 31 years later … and …

… a steady intense flow of X-Rays has been observed. That’s the new evidence and its just this one observation that has created lots of excitement.

This is not proof that we have a Black Hole here … there are other possible causes … but its still a very interesting observation that has generated a rather fascinating potential explanation.

You can find out lots more about this over on the NASA web site by clicking here …

Oh and by the way, if it really is a black hole, then you do need to remember that it is not actually 31 years old, its about 50 Million years old … why? … well think back to how far away this is (hint … how many light-years away is this) .

OK, so if its not a black hole, then what else might it be? Well, it could also be a pulsating neutron star, so its not a done deal yet. When faced with any claims that this truly is a black hole …. be skeptical … we need to keep watching to gather more evidence before we can be 100% sure.