Ep. 16, Page 53

smbhax on April 11, 2012

Gahh it got so late last night working on this that I forgot to upload it. :|
Well here's a picture of a newly discovered ultraluminous X-ray source (“ULX”) in galaxy M83–it's that deep pink spot at the top middle. This one seems to be coming from a very large stellar black hole–40 to 100 solar masses–with an unusually old stellar partner, putting its age at about 500 million years; that would make it the oldest black hole of this size spotted to date, suggesting that there are lots of other old black holes out there, just waiting to be found: