A new “black hole triple” system was found, located 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, marking the first identification of such a configuration.
System Components:
Central black hole: V404 Cygni, about 9 times the mass of the Sun.
Close star: Orbits the black hole every 6.5 days.
Distant star: Orbits the black hole every 70,000 years.
A black hole is a region with strong gravity from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Most form from collapsing stars (supernovae), but this system challenges that view.
The discovery was made by researchers from Caltech and MIT while analyzing telescope data. They found the distant star, which is gravitationally bound to the black hole.
Instead of a supernova, V404 Cygni may have formed via direct collapse, where a massive star collapses into a black hole without an explosion.
