Scientists Find "Impossible" Black Hole

From Science Alert comes the headline Scientists Just Found an "Impossible" Black Hole in The Milky Way Galaxy.

A new black hole search method has just yielded fruit, and boy is it juicy. Astronomers have found a stellar-mass black hole clocking in at around 70 times the mass of the Sun - but according to current models of stellar evolution, its size is impossible, at least in the Milky Way.

Observations that contradict the standard model of astrophysics are routine, so the finding isn't really that juicy. However, the responses of mainstream scientists often do provide for some tasty morsels to enjoy.

"Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said astronomer Jifeng Liu of the National Astronomical Observatory of China.

Increasingly, I would look to countries like China to provide truthful scientific insights. That says a lot, as the Chinese system is notoriously corrupt. The difference is that in China the leadership has been trying to clamp down on corruption, whereas the West has become a festival of falsehoods. Lying has become a virtue in itself, rather than a mere means to an end.

"LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."

As is the norm, this wasn't predicted by models, so scientists will have to engage in some post-facto rationalization to accommodate the evidence. Most likely they'll resort to scenarios of black hole mergers, much like they explain many strange observations of galaxies as the result of the chance mergers of two or more galaxies.

The star, around 35 million years old and clocking in at around eight times the mass of the Sun, is orbiting the black hole every 79 days on what the researchers called a "surprisingly circular" orbit. ... One scenario could be that LB-1 formed from the collision of two black holes and then captured the star later - but the circular orbit of its companion causes a problem here. A capture would produce a highly eccentric, elliptical orbit. Time could smooth this orbit out, but it would take longer than the star's age.

One of the big mysteries of the universe is why so many stars are found in binary systems. The normal explanation is that chance encounters between lone stars put the objects in highly elliptical co-orbits which are smoothed out by tidal forces. However, the numbers for the theory don't really work, as this example shows.

One possibility, however, could be a fallback supernova, in which material ejected from the dying star falls immediately back into it, resulting in the direct formation of a black hole. This is theoretically possible under certain conditions, but no direct evidence for it currently exists.

That's okay, because there isn't any direct evidence to support their model for the stellar lifecycle anyway. The fallback supernova says "the star runs out of fuel, which makes it explode, which makes it implode." Sounds ridiculous, but as long as they can find some way to make the math work out, they'll take it.

Perhaps LB-1, the researchers noted in their paper, could be this direct evidence.

That is not direct evidence. Even the researchers don't know what is meant by scientific evidence any more.

Of course, no article like this would be complete without an American academic to speak in euphemisms:

"This discovery forces us to re-examine our models of how stellar-mass black holes form," said LIGO Director David Reitze of the University of Florida, who was not involved in the research.

Models are not wrong, or incomplete, but instead must be "re-examined."

"This remarkable result along with the LIGO-Virgo detections of binary black hole collisions during the past four years really points towards a renaissance in our understanding of black hole astrophysics."

Surprising - even impossible - observations do not point to a lack of understanding about the stellar lifecycle, but a renaissance (or renewal) of understanding. Where we see contradictions, they see renewals of what they already know! Thus, they can never be wrong, and there is no outcome that cannot be spun in a way that demands more public funding.