{"id":198769,"date":"2024-11-03T23:27:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T05:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/physicists-discover-first-black-hole-triple"},"modified":"2024-11-03T23:27:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T05:27:18","slug":"physicists-discover-first-black-hole-triple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/physicists-discover-first-black-hole-triple","title":{"rendered":"Physicists discover first \u201cblack hole triple\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-discover-first-black-hole-triple.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a recent discovery, astronomers have found that the black hole in the well-known low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system V404 Cygni is part of a much larger structure\u2014a wide triple system.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Many black holes detected to date appear to be part of a pair. These binary systems comprise a black hole and a secondary object \u2014 such as a star, a much denser neutron star, or another black hole \u2014 that spiral around each other, drawn together by the black hole\u2019s gravity to form a tight orbital pair.<\/p>\n<p>Now a surprising discovery is expanding the picture of black holes, the objects they can host, and the way they form.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-08120-6\" target=\"_blank\">study appearing today in <em>Nature<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em> physicists at MIT and Caltech report that they have observed a \u201cblack hole triple\u201d for the first time. The new system holds a central black hole in the act of consuming a small star that\u2019s spiraling in very close to the black hole, every 6.5 days \u2014 a configuration similar to most binary systems. But surprisingly, a second star appears to also be circling the black hole, though at a much greater distance. The physicists estimate this far-off companion is orbiting the black hole every 70,000 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent discovery, astronomers have found that the black hole in the well-known low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system V404 Cygni is part of a much larger structure\u2014a wide triple system. Many black holes detected to date appear to be part of a pair. These binary systems comprise a black hole and a secondary object [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}