Shocking Discoveries Will Reshape Astrophysics of Black Holes

Dec. 2, 2019 (EIRNS)—Professor Liu Jifeng of the National Astronomical Observatory of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) announced the discovery of a stellar-mass black hole, very close to our Solar System in astronomical terms, with an estimated mass of 70 Suns, several times larger than previously thought possible, for a system only 15,000 light years away. “Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution,” Professor Liu, the deputy-director of the Observatory and the head of the research team, said in the press release.

Those of our readers familiar with Lyndon LaRouche would know that he would be excited by this news, since he was always urging his associates to explore the boundaries of our knowledge, and this black hole is one, par excellence. We don’t know much about them; they don’t allow any light to escape to tell us anything. However, once again, LaRouche would remind us of Plato’s cave; i.e., that what we see is not what we get. Everything we see, including with infrared or ultraviolet light, or by X-rays, forms mere shadows of action, and it is the action in and around the black hole, and its interaction with other stars, our galaxy, and perhaps other galaxies, that we are interested in.

Prof. David Reitze, director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory at the University of Florida, forecasts that the combined shocks of this new black hole and a recent detection of binary black hole collisions, will lead to a renaissance in our understanding of black hole astrophysics.