Supermassive black hole M87*, which became famous in 2019 when it became the first space imaged and showed a faint orange ring (and later AI sharpened into a thin ring), has now been confirmed to be spinning. The update was announced on Wednesday, September 27. But how fast is M87* spinning? It is not yet known.

For two decades, a network of radio telescopes has observed the black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy, about 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The devices were particularly intrigued by the powerful jet of radiation and particles that erupt from the black hole’s poles, and according to new results, this relativistic jet appears to swing like a pendulum on an 11-year cycle. Scientists say this is due to the gravitational interaction between the spinning black hole, which is believed to be about 6.5 billion times more massive than the black hole itself. Sunand a disk of material around it that is “conclusive evidence” of the black hole’s rotation.

“We are excited about this important discovery,” said Cui Yuzhu, a researcher at the Zhejiang Laboratory in China and lead author of the new study. Yuzhu explains that to detect the plane’s 11-year oscillation period, the team had to collect high-resolution data tracking M87’s structure for two decades and conduct a comprehensive analysis to derive key insights.

The direction of the jet changes about 10 degrees every 11 years, according to the new study. The results are also consistent with theoretical supercomputer simulations and will help shed light on how to do so. black holes Scientists say it evolves and evolves into the monsters we see in the universe.

In 2019, astronomers detected flickering jets emanating from a black hole much closer to us, about 8,000 light-years from Earth. These jets oscillated for only a few minutes; This is the fastest oscillation of its kind ever observed by astronomers.

By comparison, recent findings show that the M87 black hole’s jets have a much longer time scale. But these are still consistent with the theoretical predictions Einstein made in his groundbreaking theory of general relativity.

According to this theory, a rotating black hole is so massive that it pulls the surrounding fabric of space and time inward, a method known as frame drag. This effect is particularly evident in the team’s new work because the spin axis of the black hole is not perfectly aligned with the spin axis of the surrounding accretion disk, from which the black hole attracts stellar material. This causes the black hole’s jets to oscillate slightly, recorded in the new study.

The specific processes that cause black holes to spin are not well understood. The leading theory suggests that smaller black holes form by being fed by stellar material through an accretion disk, causing them to spin rapidly. It is believed that they collided for many years and eventually merged to form supermassive black holes.

These second-generation black holes are expected to spin slower than their younger counterparts. To truly confirm this hypothesis, researchers need to examine the spin rate of black holes of different sizes, and the latest study could be a step in that direction. Source