stellar mass black hole
A stellar black hole (or stellar-mass black hole) is a black hole formed by the gravitational collapse of a star. They have masses ranging from about 5 to several tens of solar masses. The process is observed as a hypernova explosion or as a gam ...
28,000
light-year
A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...
s away. It lies in the constellation
Scorpius
Scorpius is a zodiac constellation located in the Southern celestial hemisphere, where it sits near the center of the Milky Way, between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east. Scorpius is an ancient constellation that pre-dates the Gre ...
in the
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...
INTEGRAL
In mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented i ...
satellite in April 2003.
Description
IGR J17091 is a stellar mass black hole with a mass between 3 and 10 . It is a binary system in which a star orbits the black hole. Its small size may make it a candidate for the smallest black hole discovered. However, as of 2017 its mass was described as "unknown".
Observations by the
Chandra X-ray Observatory
The Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), is a Flagship-class space telescope launched aboard the during STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. Chandra is sensitive to X-ray sources 1 ...
in 2011 discovered that it produces the fastest
winds
Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...
ever coming from an
accretion disk
An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is typically a star. Friction, uneven irradiance, magnetohydrodynamic effects, and other fo ...
at 3,218,688
km/h
The kilometre per hour ( SI symbol: km/h; non-standard abbreviations: kph, km/hr) is a unit of speed, expressing the number of kilometres travelled in one hour.
History
Although the metre was formally defined in 1799, the term "kilometres per ho ...
speed of light
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit ...
. This is 10 times faster than the next-highest-measured wind speed. According to Ashley King from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
"Contrary to the popular perception of black holes pulling in all of the material that gets close, we estimate up to 95 percent of the matter in the disk around IGR J17091 is expelled by the wind."
IGR J17091 also exhibits peculiar
X-ray
An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...
variability patterns or "heartbeats" which are small, quasi-periodic, outbursts repeated over a 5- to 70-second timescale. Similar variability has only been observed in the black hole GRS 1915+105; however, IGR J17091's outbursts are 20 times fainter.
See also
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List of black holes
This list of black holes (and stars considered probable candidates) is organized by mass (including black holes of undetermined mass); some items in this list are galaxies or star clusters that are believed to be organized around a black hole. M ...
*
Micro black hole
Micro black holes, also called mini black holes or quantum mechanical black holes, are hypothetical tiny (<1 )
*
Hawking radiation
Hawking radiation is theoretical black body radiation that is theorized to be released outside a black hole's event horizon because of relativistic quantum effects. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who developed a theoretical arg ...