Perpustakaan Digital ITB

One of the most exotic predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity was the existence of black holes, which come in two sizes. Stellar-mass black holes are typically city-sized, have masses up to ten times that of the Sun and are born from the explosions of enormous stars. Supermassive black holes are Solar System-sized, weigh millions to billions of solar masses and reside at the centres of most massive galaxies. On page 198, Kara et al.1 report observations of an astronomical object discovered last March2,3 known as MAXI J1820+070, which consists of a stellar-mass black hole that is collecting (accreting) gas from a companion star through a structure called an accretion disk. These observations provide key insights into the physics of black-hole accretion