Bibcode
Liu, Jifeng; Zhang, Haotong; Howard, Andrew W.; Bai, Zhongrui; Lu, Youjun; Soria, Roberto; Justham, Stephen; Li, Xiangdong; Zheng, Zheng; Wang, Tinggui; Belczynski, Krzysztof; Casares, Jorge; Zhang, Wei; Yuan, Hailong; Dong, Yiqiao; Lei, Yajuan; Isaacson, Howard; Wang, Song; Bai, Yu; Shao, Yong; Gao, Qing; Wang, Yilun; Niu, Zexi; Cui, Kaiming; Zheng, Chuanjie; Mu, Xiaoyong; Zhang, Lan; Wang, Wei; Heger, Alexander; Qi, Zhaoxiang; Liao, Shilong; Lattanzi, Mario; Gu, Wei-Min; Wang, Junfeng; Wu, Jianfeng; Shao, Lijing; Shen, Rongfeng; Wang, Xiaofeng; Bregman, Joel; Di Stefano, Rosanne; Liu, Qingzhong; Han, Zhanwen; Zhang, Tianmeng; Wang, Huijuan; Ren, Juanjuan; Zhang, Junbo; Zhang, Jujia; Wang, Xiaoli; Cabrera-Lavers, Antonio; Corradi, Romano; Rebolo, R.; Zhao, Yongheng; Zhao, Gang; Chu, Yaoquan; Cui, Xiangqun
Bibliographical reference
Nature
Advertised on:
11
2019
Journal
Citations
171
Refereed citations
142
Description
All stellar-mass black holes have hitherto been identified by X-rays emitted from gas that is accreting onto the black hole from a companion star. These systems are all binaries with a black-hole mass that is less than 30 times that of the Sun1-4. Theory predicts, however, that X-ray-emitting systems form a minority of the total population of star-black-hole binaries5,6. When the black hole is not accreting gas, it can be found through radial-velocity measurements of the motion of the companion star. Here we report radial-velocity measurements taken over two years of the Galactic B-type star, LB-1. We find that the motion of the B star and an accompanying Hα emission line require the presence of a dark companion with a mass of 68-13+11 solar masses, which can only be a black hole. The long orbital period of 78.9 days shows that this is a wide binary system. Gravitational-wave experiments have detected black holes of similar mass, but the formation of such massive ones in a high-metallicity environment would be extremely challenging within current stellar evolution theories.
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Black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs and their local environment
Accreting black-holes and neutron stars in X-ray binaries provide an ideal laboratory for exploring the physics of compact objects, yielding not only confirmation of the existence of stellar mass black holes via dynamical mass measurements, but also the best opportunity for probing high-gravity environments and the physics of accretion; the most
Montserrat
Armas Padilla