Black holes are no longer a mystery!

So far, all the information about black holes, the researchers were only guesses. Managed to find a way to carefully examine these mysterious objects.

Black holes presented a mystery for years. All known methods for the study of astronomical objects is based on analysis of emitted or reflected radiation. Black holes absorb waves but all directed towards them. Therefore it was impossible to explore even the most basic properties of these objects, such as their size or weight.

But scientists have found a solution to this problem. They decided to examine the spectrum of electromagnetic waves absorbed and emitted by a team of celestial bodies, which included a black hole and a star falling in the blue giants. The arrangement of these two celestial bodies system called Cygnus X-1. In order to measure the exact distance at which the test object is from Earth, scientists often use parallax effect . For a year observing the change in the position of such stars in the sky. Then, using simple rules of geometry, one can easily calculate the distance of the object from Earth. Unfortunately, the system Cygnus X-1 is too far away to be able to see it with most telescopes. Therefore, the measurement stations used VLBA (stands for Very Long Baseline Array), which includes up to 10 identical telescopes arranged such in Texas and Hawaii. Analysis of the signals recorded by all devices allows a very high degree of accuracy determine the position of objects in the universe.

Astronomers have estimated the distance a black hole for 6060 years of light from Earth. For comparison, the sun is far away from us for nearly 150 million km, which represents only a small fraction of one light year.
When the researchers already know the location of the object, they could focus on studying the fundamental properties, such as mass or diameter.

Objects of different mass move to a specific at . So the researchers to determine the mass of the black hole they needed to know the speed of the circulating orbit. This figure is most easily calculated knowing the time in which the object moves from point A to B. Of course it was impossible to examine directly the black hole, so calculated moving speed of the stars around it. On this basis, estimated as moving black hole. Eventually, scientists discovered that it is up to 15 times heavier than our Sun. Measure the diameter black hole proved to be very easy. So when scientists already knew how to find the exact position of a star, wait until it is on the line connecting the Earth with the black hole. When that happened, radio telescopes collected the radiation, which looked like a blue ring in the middle of which was a black spot. The black hole swallowed the radiation, so an empty space in the resulting image accurately reflect its dimensions. Ultimately, it turned out that the black hole is a tiny object. Its diameter is only 44 km, when the Sun has a diameter equal to 1392 million km! It's hard to imagine that so small an object can weigh up to 15 times more than the nearest star. These latest calculations show how huge gravitational forces must act in the midst of black holes, since in such a small volume of concentrated mass is so large.

Anyway I think black holes in space are little bit like a Bermuda`s triangle on Earth.
Things just disappeared.