120: Biggest Small Black Hole

This week, a new Black Hole Record (kinda), and with it a nice conundrum. the GAIA mission has found the biggest black hole ... of the stellar-mass variety ... in our galaxy. A lot of caveats there, but the fun thing is, it's just next door, which makes us wonder if that's coincidence or a harbinger of more big black holes to come in GAIA's data dumps! Plus, a riddle: why do we keep spotting black holes that are too big to make? Did we break physics? Emily has a few explanations.

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Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

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Some of the things we talk about in this episode:

• The Biggest (small) Black Hole (in our galaxy)

• The rapid-release paper

• The GAIA mission

• GAIA’s data release schedule

• Types of Black Hole

• LIGO gravitational wave telescope

• Quasi-stars

• Syzygy Episode 116: Black Hole Sun