domingo, 2 de novembro de 2008

CygnusX1_up there is home

Cygnus X-1 is a well known galactic X-ray source in the constellation Cygnus. It was discovered in 1964 during a rocket flight and is one of the strongest X-ray sources seen from Earth, producing a peak X-ray flux of 2.3×10−23 Wm−2Hz-1.
Cygnus X-1 was the first X-ray source widely accepted to be a black hole candidate and it remains among the most studied astronomical objects in its class. It is now estimated to have a mass about 8.7 times the mass of the Sun and has been shown to be too compact to be any known kind of normal star or other likely object besides a black hole. If so, the radius of its event horizon is probably about 26 km
Cygnus X-1 belongs to a high-mass X-ray binary system about 6000 light years from the Sun that includes a blue supergiant variable star designated HDE 226868 which it orbits at about 0.2 AU, or 20% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
. Hence the star may have instead collapsed directly into a black hole.
Cygnus X-1 was the subject of a friendly scientific wager between physicists Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne in 1974, with Professor Hawking betting that it was not a black hole. He conceded the bet in 1990 after observational data had strengthened the case for a gravitational singularity in the system.
A minha intuição diz-me que foi de CygnusX1 que eu vim!

3 comentários:

tacci disse...

«Vinha eu, em grande paz...»

Beatriz Lamas Oliveira disse...

...de Cygnus_X1.. ali de cima, de casa...

mulher disse...

:)