Black holes can rotate: discovery by Chinese scientific team paves the way for new scientific theories
A great scientific discovery was made by a Chinese scientific team , in collaboration with US and Italian scientists, which reveals a previously unobserved aspect of black holes . These huge, super dense celestial objects can rotate on themselves, they have what scientists call “Spin”.
The research team led by Cui Yuzhu, a Chinese researcher, who found the first decisive evidence of a rotating black hole, illuminating the most mysterious and destructive objects in our universe.
A black hole is a celestial object that has such a large mass and such a high density that not even light can escape its gravitational pull. Black holes form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their lives, or when two neutron stars or two black holes merge.
Black holes are invisible, but we can observe the effects they have on nearby matter and radiation. For example, if a black hole is near a normal star, it can strip away some of its gas and form an accretion disk around itself. The gas in the disk heats up and emits X-rays, which can be detected by space telescopes.
Another way to study black holes is through gravitational waves, which are waves in space-time produced by violent events such as black hole mergers. The fact that they are such elusive objects and that they do not emit radiation or matter directly has made their study very complex, at least so far, but this group of scientists has overcome the limits present so far.
The team used a global network of radio telescopes to analyze more than 20 years of observation data, and found that a giant black hole in the M87 Galaxy was emitting jets of particles that wobbled like a spinning top. This allowed us to ascertain the presence of a spin, of a rotation, even if it was so slow that the rotation cycle observed was approximately 11 years long.
The team explained that the oscillation of the jets was caused by the fact that the rotation axis of the black hole was not perfectly aligned with that of its ring of gas and dust, and that this misalignment dragged space-time and caused the jet oscillation, a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity and which can be compared to the oscillation of a top when it rotates on itself.
This is the first observational evidence of the rotation of a black hole, and it could help scientists better understand the formation of supermassive black holes, a still unresolved question in physics. However, further observation data in different wavelengths are needed to confirm and further investigate this finding. Furthermore, it is necessary to analyze the repercussions, especially at the level of the "Event Horizon", i.e. the external limit of the black hole within which any object or radiation is absorbed by the black hole itself: the rotation can generate an area in which the objects are they not absorbed, but receive an acceleration like a sort of super gravitational slingshot, already used for the space travel of exploratory probes?
There is still so much to know about the wonders of the universe.
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The article Black holes can rotate: discovery by a Chinese scientific team paves the way for new scientific theories comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/i-buchi-neri-possono-ruotare-scoperta-di-team-scientifico-cinese-apre-la-strada-a-nuove-teorie-scientifiche/ on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 09:00:14 +0000.