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Chinese astronomers discover ‘impossibly massive’ black hole LB-1

  • Scientists from National Astronomical Observatory of China say find has 70 times the mass of the sun, even though physics says that is impossible
  • Black hole found using world’s largest galaxy scanner, the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope in northern China

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Chinese astronomers have discovered a black hole so huge that it challenges existing models of how stars evolve. Photo: AFP
Stephen Chenin Beijing

Chinese astronomers have discovered a black hole in the Milky Way that present scientific theory says is too big to exist.

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Scientists from the National Astronomical Observatory of China say the find, dubbed LB-1, has 70 times the mass of the sun, even though physics says that is impossible.

“We were so shocked we could not believe what we saw,” researcher Liu Jifeng said in Beijing on Thursday.

He said he and his colleagues consulted astronomers from around the world and after three years of fact-checking announced their find in an article published by the scientific journal Nature.

Present theory says that stars are made up of various elements, ranging from light gas to heavy metals. Lighter elements are converted into heavier ones by thermal nuclear reactions at their core, releasing a massive amount of energy in the process.

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One of the researchers says he “could not believe what we saw”. Photo: AFP
One of the researchers says he “could not believe what we saw”. Photo: AFP
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