Black holes 'spinning faster than ever before' |
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Washington, May 24 ANI: The giant black holes in the center of galaxies are on average spinning faster than at any time in the history of the Universe, it has emerged. Dr. Alejo Martinez-Sansigre of the University of Portsmouth and Prof. Steve Rawlings of the University of Oxford compared theoretical models of spinning black holes with radio, optical and X-ray observations made using a variety of instruments and found that the theories can explain very well the population of supermassive black holes with jets. Using the radio observations, the two astronomers were able to sample the population of black holes, deducing the spread of the power of the jets. By estimating how they acquire material the accretion process the two scientists could then infer how quickly these objects are spinning. The observations also give information on how the spins of supermassive black holes have evolved. In the past, when the Universe was half its the present size, practically all of the supermassive black holes had very low spins, whereas nowadays a fraction of them have very high spins. So on average, supermassive black holes are spinning faster than ever before. The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ANI Posted by aniin on Thursday May 26 reply Comments |
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