New look at first black hole detected shows it is bigger than expected - Yahoo News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fresh examination has revealed new details about the first black hole ever detected - which was spotted in 1964 and became the subject of a friendly wager between renowned scientists - including that it is bigger than previously known.

Researchers said on Thursday that new observations of the Cygnus X-1 black hole, orbiting in a stellar marriage with a large and luminous star, showed it is 21 times our sun's mass, about 50% more massive than previously believed.

Some - the "supermassive" black holes - are immense, like the one at our Milky Way galaxy's center 4 million times the sun's mass.

Smaller "stellar-mass" black holes possess the mass of a single star.

It devours material blowing from the surface of the companion star it tightly orbits, a "blue supergiant" about 40 times our sun's mass.

It started its existence 4 million to 5 million years ago as a star up to 75 times the sun's mass and collapsed into a black hole a few tens of thousands of years ago.

Space race 2.0 - the hunt for Mars's secrets Nasa prepares to fly first space helicopter on Mars Devon company that made World War Two parachutes to land Mars Perseverance Rover Nasa's plutonium-powered Perseverance rover successfully touched down on Mars on Thursday night in an epic quest to search for signs of ancient life.

NASA's Perseverance rover — designed to further the hunt for past life on Mars — successfully touched down on the Red Planet Thursday.