What about black holes?
Black holes have not been discussed much on this site despite the fact that they seem to be very closely related to neutron stars. The reason for this lack of discussion is that this site is about pulsars, and pulsars have been determined to be rotating neutron stars. All the new science and analysis on this site is related to the behavior of neutron star pulsars, and, in particular, the characteristics of the pulsar spin rates in the case of of both pulsar in binary systems and isolated pulsars. All the conclusions reached about there being more neutron stars in the galaxy than regular stars is based on analysis of pulsar spin rates. Because black holes have no spin rate properties, there has been no compelling reason to discuss them.
However, in the context of considering AGN’s as possible isolated neutron star candidates, and the fact that the AGN’s are modeled as some kind of black hole within a bunch of galactic material that has jets and lobes and the kinds of things that are also known to be associated with pulsars, some consideration needs to be paid to whether and how black holes fit into the whole NS-Capture Theory context.
Throughout the years I have been aware that a number of x-ray sources have been determined to be a black hole in a close binary system with some kind of normal star. At least as normal as a star can be having a neutron star or black hole orbiting around in its atmosphere.
A fairly simple extension to NS-Capture can be made to accommodate black holes. The extension is that instead of dark matter consisting of only neutron stars, as NS-Capture suggests, we can assert that the dark matter consists of a mix of neutron stars and black holes.
The main distinguishing feature between a black hole and a neutron star is that the mass of a neutron star is about 1.4 solar masses, whereas the mass of a black hole must be at least 3 solar masses.
This model provides some useful concepts:
- We now have a method for creating black hole x-ray binaries: the same method as we have for creating neutron star x-ray binaries: i.e. capture of a passing black hole by an ordinary star, when the black hole passes close enough to have a tidal interaction resulting in a bound system. The black hole binary will evolve the same way as the neutron star binary except that the black hole will not spin up to become a pulsar.
- We now have an explanation for supernova remnants that do not contain a pulsar! i.e. in the same way that the neutron star disrupts and destroys its companion by tidal turbulence and x-ray heating from accretion, the black hole will provide the same disturbance that will cause the companion to become gravitationally unstable and dissipate.
Therefore, NS-Capture Theory suggests that black hole x-ray binaries and supernova explosions that do not result in a pulsar being found can be modeled by a population of dark matter objects consisting of a mix of neutron stars and black holes.
