Astonishing 2024 Black Hole Spins Faster Than Thought. Discover Its Secrets!

Scientists just made an astounding discovery – they’ve measured the spin of a supermassive black hole, revealing it’s whirling at a mind-boggling quarter of the speed of light! This groundbreaking feat could unlock secrets about how these cosmic beasts grow over billions of years.

Key Takeaways

  • Astronomers have calculated the spin rate of a supermassive black hole a billion light-years away, finding it’s spinning at nearly 75 million meters per second – just under 25% the speed of light.
  • Measuring a black hole’s spin provides clues about how it grew over cosmic time – faster spins suggest steady gas accretion, while slower spins point to growth through violent mergers.
  • The team made this breakthrough by studying the wobbling of the black hole’s accretion disk after it disrupted and consumed an unlucky star that ventured too close.

Peering into the Spinning Cosmic Abyss

The Dancing Disk Reveals a Secret

Like a whirling dervish performing an intricate, mesmerizing dance, the accretion disk surrounding this distant supermassive black hole betrayed its mysterious spin. As the stellar debris orbited the gargantuan void, its movements revealed a telltale wobble – allowing the keen-eyed astronomers to calculate the exact speed of the black hole’s rotation.

A Galactic Growth Story

Astonishing 2024 Black Hole Spins Faster Than Thought. Discover Its Secrets!
Source: gizmodo.com

“The spin of a black hole is the cosmic equivalent of a fingerprint – it tells the story of how it grew over eons,” explains Dheeraj Pasham, the MIT astronomer who led this pioneering study. Steady accretion of gas tends to spin black holes up rapidly, while violent mergers with other massive objects act as a brake – slowing their frenetic whirling.

The Opportunity of Tidal Disruption

Occasionally, an unlucky star strays a little too close to a black hole’s overwhelming gravitational clutches and meets an untimely, spectacular end. The incredible tidal forces quite literally tear the star apart, flinging some of its material out into the cosmic void while the rest is greedily consumed – joining the whirling accretion disk surrounding the black hole’s dark maw.

Catching a Stellar Snack in the Act

In February 2020, the Zwicky Transient Facility spotted a brilliant flare of X-rays emanating from a galaxy a billion light-years away. This was the unmistakable signature of a black hole devouring an ill-fated star – a tidal disruption event that would provide an unparalleled opportunity to study the beast’s spin.

Peering into the Cosmic Spinning Top

The Rhythmic Rise and Fall

For over 200 days, NASA’s X-ray telescopes kept a watchful eye on this stellar slaughter, noting that the X-ray emissions peaked every 15 days or so. This pulsing pattern was the key – it meant the accretion disk’s orientation was periodically aligned with Earth, causing the X-ray signals to brighten as the disk’s hot, glowing rim came into view.

Cosmic Choreography Reveals All

By analyzing this rhythmic wobble of the accretion disk along with the black hole’s mass and the amount of stellar material it had consumed, the astronomers could finally reverse-engineer its spin rate. The entity at the heart of this cosmic dance was whirling at nearly 75 million meters per second – just under 25% of light speed!

A Stellar Warm-Up Act

While still blisteringly fast by human standards, this spin rate is actually considered relatively sedate for a supermassive black hole. The maximum possible spin clocks in at a dizzying 94% of light speed, as calculated by the famous physicist Kip Thorne back in 1974. Perhaps this gigantic dancing diva is just warming up…

Conclusion

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Cosmos, One Spin at a Time

This incredible measurement is more than just a new record – it’s a tantalizing glimpse behind the veil that shrouds the lives of black holes across the cosmos. By continuing to catalog the spins of these insatiable gravitational behemoths, astronomers can finally start unraveling some of the deepest mysteries about how galaxies grow and evolve over unimaginable spans of deep time.

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