Accidental discovery of 1st-ever 'black hole triple' system challenges what we know about how singularities form

Researchers spotted a second distant star orbiting a well-known black hole and its stellar companion in a never-before-seen gravitational triad. The system's unique configuration suggests that the black hole was not created as scientists initially expected.

Researchers spotted a new star orbiting far around the black hole V404 Cygni and its nearby stellar companion. This configuration suggests the black hole was not birthed by a supernova.

Astronomers have accidentally discovered the first-known "black hole triple" system, containing a dark void orbited by two stars. The unique configuration of this triad hints that the black hole was not born via a supernova, which blows away what we thought we knew about how these cosmic entities form.

Until now, most discovered black holes  excluding the supermassive variety at the center of most galaxies exist in binary systems, in which they are orbited by another large object, such as a star, neutron star or a smaller black hole. This is because the invisible space-time voids are easier to spot when they are gravitationally tugging on other objects.

But in a new study, published Wednesday (Oct. 23) in the journal Nature, researchers discovered that one of these known binary systems, which contains the black hole V404 Cygni feasting on a nearby star, actually has a second star circling the pair at a much greater distance.

Gravitational calculations show that the newfound star could not have remained in this delicate system if the black hole was birthed by an exploding star, or supernova, as most other black holes are believed to form. If it had, the distant star would have been blown out of the system by the resulting shockwave. Instead, the team suggests that the black hole formed via the gradual collapse of a massive third star that was once orbited by the other two stars.

This possibility is "super exciting for black hole evolution," study lead author Kevin Burdge, an astrophysicist at MIT, said in a statement. "We think most black holes form from violent explosions of stars, but this discovery helps call that into question," Burdge added.

The black hole in the newly realized triad, V404 Cygni, is about nine times more massive than the sun and located in the Milky Way around 8,000 light-years from Earth. It was one of the first black holes ever discovered when it was spotted in 1992 and has been studied extensively since. Scientists have also long known about its nearby star, which circles the black hole every 6.5 days and is slowly being devoured by its massive partner.

This is not the first time that researchers thought they had found a black hole triple. In 2020, researchers spotted what they believed to be a black hole being orbited by two stars around 1,000 light-years from Earth, which would have made it the closest black hole to us. However, subsequent observations revealed that this system was actually a binary system containing a "vampire star" instead that is, a star that slowly steals gas from a smaller partner star.

If V404 Cygni formed through gradual collapse, as the researchers suspect, then the team believes the peculiar black hole was birthed at some point in the last 4 billion years, after the two stars were born.

Over the last few years, researchers have begun to suspect that gradual collapse could be a more common origin for black holes than previously realized. And in March, researchers proposed this mechanism could be behind the disappearance of "vanishing stars" that astronomers have recently lost track of. The new findings suggest that this could be the case.

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

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