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Astronomers and sky observers have known for decades Cygnus X-1, a binary system formed by a stellar mass black hole and a blue supergiant star in orbit around it.
away from Earth in the Cygnus constellation, has been subjected to a series of studies, but recently, an international team of researchers used a new technique to better understand the shape and physical properties of the rotating material around the black hole.
Designated as the first The Cygnus X-1 hole weighs almost 15 suns. It's one of the strongest X-ray sources seen from Earth, but this light does not come from the black hole itself.
As already established, no light escapes a black hole. That is, there is no direct way to observe this or any other void and to understand their properties.
However, scientists used the X-rays emitted by the material surrounding the black holes to get a glimpse. In this particular case, this material comes from the star near the black hole. Stellar winds push the companion star material into an accretion disk around the black hole, which is then heated to millions of degrees, resulting in the emission of X-rays. [19659002ScientistshavelongknowntheaccretiondiskunderstandsthegeometryofthematterthatformsitbecauseX-raysscatterinmanydirectionsjustlikethevisiblelightofthesunbecauseofrelativisticeffects
"It's the same situation with X-rays hard around a black hole, "Hiromitsu Takahashi, an assistant professor at Hiroshima University and one of the co-authors of the latest work, said in a statement
In the case of sunlight, a polarized filter may contain the vibrations of light in one direction. "However, hard x-rays and gamma rays from the black hole penetrate this filter," added Takahashi, "there is no such glasses, so we need another type of treatment to direct and measure this diffusion of light ".
It is here that the group used a technique called X-ray polarimetry. They deployed an X-ray polarimeter – an instrument for measuring the polarization of light – on a balloon called PoGO + and measured from Where the light came from and where it was starting to disperse.
All the effort revealed how much x-rays accretion disk and helped the team predict the shape of the material that makes it up. They came up with two distinct models describing how the material might appear in a binary formed with a black hole – the lamp model and the extended model.
According to the first model, the black hole crown, a mysterious source of energetic particles, is extremely compact and closely related to vacuum. In this way, more photons bend toward the accretion disk, leading to a greater amount of reflected light.
The second model, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite and suggests that the crown is much larger and extended around the black hole, resulting from the much smaller X-rays of the disc.
Although both theories looked promising, the team noted that the observations made in the study are more consistent with the extended model because there is not much evidence of flexion . of light near the black hole of Cygnus X-1. They believe that this and other related works will reveal more about the properties of black holes and their environment.
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