Knowledge

Was the Sagittarius A* black hole ever a star?

Stars with mass more than 150 Solar Masses are believed to be unstable. The radiation pressure from the core would be so high that it would shed the outer layers of the star eventually leading to loss of mass.

Sagitarius A* weighs around 4 Million Solar Masses.

So in order for it to be a star before becoming a Super Massive Black Hole, it would have to be a star with less than 150 Solar Masses, become a blackhole (in a process which anyways sheds a lot of mass) & then grow from there to acquire a mass of 4 Mn Solar Masses.

Frankly this process would need a LOT more time than the age of the universe. So it could not be a star before becoming a black hole.

Blackholes this big are formed by either of the following three processes:

  1. Massive cloud of gas compressed to not just form a star but directly a blackhole. This is believed to be the most common or likely way of formation of Super Massive Blackholes.
  2. Blackhole Collisions can also make bigger blackholes. But in order to make blackholes with Millions of Solar Masses, you need loads and loads of Stellar Mass Blackholes. And loads & loads of time.
  3. Accretion Disk (the glowy ring around the Blackhole) is another way of adding mass to Blackhole. But its unlikely, because there usually has not been enough time for a blackhole to eat so much for it to grow this much.

t’s progenitor very likely may have been, at least partially.

Nobody can answer this question with confidence though, because we don’t know for certain how supermassive black holes form.

Some theories suggest that they usually form from a direct collapse of gases, without ever having been a star. Other theories say that they may start as very large stars that either collapse directly into black holes or first explode as supernova and then collapse. Yet more theories suggest that black holes are first ‘seeded’ by dark matter.

If it ever was a star, that’s now only a tiny fraction of its overall mass. The rest of it would come from other stars, planets, and gases that have been consumed by it in the billions of years of its existence.

Related Posts

Disregarding the religious significance, was David vs Goliath really a common misconception?

The David vs Goliath story actually makes perfect tactical sense. Ancient armies regularly used slingers as elite ranged units, not just shepherds with rocks. A skilled slinger could…

Why do they claim that tsunamis are over 100′ but there are none on video?

Both the Indonesian and Japan tsunamis claim to be 100′ and 130′ high but all the video shows is some water rushing over the beach. Where are the…

Why didn’t the Japanese try to decipher the famous “Navajo” code by capturing a Navajo native during WWII?

The Japanese did try to figure out the code from captured Navajo men. However, they were unsuccessful in using them to decipher the code. The reason was simple….

Why is Jesus called God by Christians?

The godhood of Jesus is directly rooted in the oldest gospel. When critics say that Jesus never called himself God or that the gospels do not make this…

It is said that Voyager 1 will leave the Solar System and travel through interstellar space. Will it not be destroyed when it hits the Oort cloud?

As the late Douglas Adams pointed out: “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.” So here is the thing:…

Why is Mercury not the hottest planet in the Solar System?

Because, Mercury is a near-vacuum, a desolate wasteland with a ghost atmosphere. This is due to a combination of factors: Mercury’s feeble gravitational pull, akin to a dying…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *