Astronomy Picture of the Day - Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole

NASA ^ | 4 May, 2025 | Illustration Credit: Robert Hurt, NASA/JPL-Caltech

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really unknown. Theorists usually model rapidly rotating black holes with the Kerr solution to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which predicts several amazing and unusual things. Perhaps its most easily testable prediction, though, is that matter entering a maximally rotating black hole should be last seen orbiting at near the speed of light, as seen from far away. This prediction was tested by NASA's NuSTAR and ESA's XMM satellites by observing the supermassive black hole at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1365. The near light-speed limit was confirmed by measuring the heating and spectral line broadening of nuclear emissions at the inner edge of the surrounding accretion disk. Pictured here is an artist's illustration depicting an accretion disk of normal matter swirling around a black hole, with a jet emanating from the top. Since matter randomly falling into the black hole should not spin up a black hole this much, the NuSTAR and XMM measurements also validate the existence of the surrounding accretion disk.

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TOPICS: Astronomy; Astronomy Picture of the Day; Science
KEYWORDS: apod; nasa

[MtnClimber]

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[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[MtnClimber]

Hole New Worlds: It’s Black Hole Week at NASA!

[Steely Tom]

Here’s something to be happy about: the nearest one of those things is more then ten thousand light years away.

[telescope115]

Amazing stuff…

[Getready]

As the matter close to the black hole speeds up to close to the speed of light ..its mass should increase up to infinity which means it will be more massive than the black hole and swallow up the black hole. The black should be ripped apart and absorbed by the encircling super duper mass. No?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"...more then ten thousand light years away."

Ummmm...not so fast there..."Physicists create 'black hole bomb' for first time on Earth, validating decades-old theory"

[dayglored]

But it wasn’t a “real” black hole.

[Bobbyvotes]

Whew! That is very good to know!

[Deaf and Discerning]

It reminds me of a Star Trek Next Generation episode of the Enterprise almost getting swallowed up by a black hole.