Posted on 03/17/2016 6:36:54 PM PDT by MtnClimber
upermassive black holes are the most extreme objects in the known universe, with masses millions or even billions of times the mass of our sun. Now astronomers have been able to study one of these behemoths inside a strange, distant quasar and theyve made an astonishing discovery its spinning one-third the speed of light.
Studying a supermassive black hole some 3.5 billion light-years away is no easy feat, but this isnt a regular object: its a quasar that shows quasi-periodic brightening events every 12 years or so a fact that has helped astronomers reveal its extreme nature.
Quasars are extremely bright accretion disks in galactic cores driven by copious quantities of matter falling into the central supermassive black hole. The vast majority of galaxies are thought to contain supermassive black holes, though modern galaxies have calmed down and quasars no longer shine. But its a different story for galaxies that are billions of light-years away.
The object at the center of the strange quasar called OJ287 weighs in at 18 billion solar masses and is one of the biggest supermassive (or ultramassive?) black holes in the known universe. Interestingly, it is also one of the most well-studied quasars as it is located very close to the apparent path of the suns motion across the sky as seen from Earth a region where historic searches for asteroids and comets are regularly carried out. Therefore, astronomers have over 100 years of serendipitous brightness data for OJ287, allowing them to predict when the next flaring event would be.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Interesting story about black holes orbiting each other and causing quasar flashes every 12 years.
This is racist.
“The economy is doing very well ... I have improved the Middle East ... the racial divisions are caused by Republicans ...”
“Spin of a Monster Black Hole”
who could that be?
#Blackholesmatter
I would like to shoot a neutron star into a black hole at light speed and see what happens.
If you had two galactic class black holes orbiting each other so that their event horizons overlapped could you fly a ship perpendicular into and through the overlap and escape?
Here I thought it was about BLM.
Don’t Black Holes Mattter?
If it’s spinning that fast, shouldn’t it be spewing black matter all over the place?
How about doing the neutron dance at light speed near a black hole?
And as for energy? Meh.
What's spinning at one third the speed of light? The event horizon? The center of the black hole has zero rotational speed.
It could have rotational speed it doesn’t want to show you.
I think it is the accretion disk which is the disk of material orbiting and falling into the black hole. They must be measuring doppler shift from the light flashes when the smaller black hole passes through the disk twice in its elliptical orbit.
1/3 the speed of light?
That’s nothing. Scientists are still trying to develop technology to measure the spin rate of MSNBC.
“I would like to shoot a neutron star into a black hole at light speed and see what happens.”
Be sure to put on safety goggles first.
What’s spinning at one third the speed of light? The event horizon? The center of the black hole has zero rotational speed.
My question too.
Since when does velocity relate to frequency without amy qualification?
Common core accepted science teaching is really showing.
Thanks MtnClimber. [singing] we're fixing a monster supermassive black hole where the rain gets in...
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