Ides 90: Cygnus X-1 Black Lager

Back in 1971, a young astronomer named Charles Thomas Bolton was just another student at the University of Toronto. Bolton was particularly interested in a concentration of X-rays coming from the constellation Cygnus, and he felt pretty sure that he could prove it was a neutron star.  But there was a more significant truth lying in the cluster of outer space X-rays, a star orbiting at more than 200 times the speed of sound: Cygnus X-1, the first discovered black hole.

As predicted by Einstein, many scientists didn’t believe black holes existed at all. Even Stephen Hawking bet against it. But Bolton published his paper and, twenty years later, there was enough evidence to support him so that black holes became a widely-accepted scientific fact.

A few dozen black holes have been found so far. There are estimated to be a few hundred million still out there waiting to inspire future prog-rock bands, for better or worse.