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Fastest Spinning Black Hole Ever Found
brian0918 writes, "NewScientist reports that researchers in Cambridge have detected a black hole spinning at nearly 1,000 times per second — the fastest ever recorded. From the article: 'McClintock's team examined a black hole in our galaxy called GRS 1915+105, which lies about 36,000 light years away. They found the innermost stable orbit around GRS 1915 is so close that the black hole must be spinning at nearly 1000 times per second. The finding supports the idea that only fast-spinning stars can collapse to create powerful explosions called long gamma-ray bursts.'" The Astrophysical Journal abstract is open but you have to be a subscriber to read the full article there.
I bet it would make for a crappy RAID array.
In addition to low throughput, I bet there would be some data loss.
I thought this title was held by White House press secretary Tony Snow...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I would like to point out that "Long gamma ray bursts" would be an excellent name for a rock band.
The original article is from The Astrophysical Journal and I'm not sure if you can read this but I'll link it here. I have an account so that may be unreachable, if it is try the PDF of it or the abstract. I often enjoy reading the original article no matter how large and complex it is. If anything, it causes me to look up more terms so that I feel like I'm learning something.
My work here is dung.
I find it amazing that they can find an object which emits absolutely no light, halfway across the galaxy, and yet it's still so hard to find planets. I know they find the black holes by their accretion discs, but I still think it's remarkable.
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We know it won't fly apart from centrifugal force.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
"They found the innermost stable orbit around GRS 1915 is so close that the black hole must be spinning at nearly 1000 times per second." I'd be interested to know just how close that is, a few million miles, a few billion?
The astrophysics arXiv preprint from June.
In theory, that could be a time machine... anyone know the details of the math?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
People, what we have is a model, not an observation. As TFA says, this model is based on assumptions, though fewer assumptions in the past:"Now, astronomers have measured the spin of a black hole with a new method that requires fewer assumptions."
The black hole may indeed be spinning at 1000 revs, or is might just be that one of the model assumptions is invalid.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
They didn't mention it in the article but thankfully I'm a black hole expert :-D There's a theory that says since the singularity is infinitely small then technically no matter is actually moving when it's rotating so it doesn't have to obey the speed of light speed limit and may be able to rotate faster than the speed of light. No idea how they can measure the speed if there's no radius but anyway, if it gets up to that speed they theorize that it will completely stop emitting gravity and either just sit there or explode, but most likely just sit there. This is the only known (well, in theory) way to "destroy" a black hole so when one comes and sucks up Pluto, thus ending that stupid debate, and is heading for Earth, we can just shoot particles into it at the correct angle and it will absorb the kinetic energy and translate it into spin and eventually spin so fast it effectively isn't dangerous anymore :)
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So the question is, whos grave is it and what did we do to get them to spin that fast?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Pretty fast! Now how large would the black hole need to be to approach the speed of light at the outer edge?
...some astronomers have expressed doubt that stars would be spinning fast enough at this stage in their lives.
Now, i'm not an astrophysicist, but it seems to me that if a star had any spin at all before collapsing into a black hole, that spin would be magnified quite substantially, to conserve angular momentum (y'know, like a figure skater, or you spinning on your office chair).
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
If you'd like to see the whole article, as published in the Astrophysical Journal, you can find it on the astro-ph journal pre-print server. It's not the "official" journal version, but it should be identical to it (and was submitted to the preprint server by the authors).
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
I'm no genius in physics, but I thought the only way you could measure the absolute speed or position of something (at least on the sub atomic level) is to bounce another particle off of it (light, electron, quark, whatever) (and never both at the same time). Same applies to larger objects in every day life, where you typically just bounce light off them.
So how the hell do you measure the rotational speed of a black hole, when by definition every particle you shoot at it gets sucked in never to return?
cue the goatse jokes!
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
Well, since a 747 is significantly less massive than a black hole (except for very few - if any - primordial black holes, and even then, after swallowing Pluto they'd definitely be more massive), and BBs are significantly bigger than most particles, I'd say trying to deflect a 747 with BBs would actually be much, much easier. Assuming you have the correct angle, of course... :P
(Never mind the fact that by the time said black hole swallowed up Pluto it'd already have totally destroyed our orbital trajectory.)
Ben Hocking
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of the black hole?
If an ogject is orbiting at 1,000 times per second in order for it to remain just below the speed of light it would have to be NO farther than about 30 miles from the center of the black hole.
It's got to be on the verge of exploding. I wonder what effect the explosion will have here on Earth at 38,000 light years away?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Here's a 20 mile diameter pulsar spinning at 716 Hertz. When you factor in the increase in rotational speed with the black hole contraction, 1K sounds real plausible.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Some astrophysicists say that some spinning cylindrical black holes warp spacetime enough that a projectile moving through its nearby region gets its velocity rotated to travel through time instead of a spatial axis. Is this new one the longest wormhole yet found?
--
make install -not war
one of the stock phrases, whenever you try to touch something interesting but non-functional in the game:
"Doooon't mess with it!"
In this case, it sounds extremely functional, in the gravity-that-rips-your-arms-off sense.
stuff |
Not that kind of Black Hole, you idiot!
I for one, welcome our new extremely dizzy overlords.
I'm guessing that was an attempt at a joke? Desperate for +1 "Funny" mods are we?
this article needs more meatspin.gif
How much GB will every DISC include?
will a disk cost more then PS3?
Some answers are left unanswered
Around stationary black holes, time does not work that way. Around spinning black holes, time *really* doesn't work that way (I could have sworn we hadn't even solved the GR metric for that system yet...). Unfortunately, reality has the tendancy to ignore the way that I, at least, think it should behave.
Basic idea -- large gravitational well means that distances are streeeeeeeetched and so is time. In the local frame of reference, the orbiting object is moving much slower than we're seeing it here in the bookkeeper frame. Of course, beyond that and my undergraduate level GR class is no longer really adequate enough to be worth mention.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
If I remember correctly, centrifugal force as we know it actually reverses near a black hole. Pulling inward instead of outward. A rotating black hole may be compressed further by its rotation. Maybe someone familiar with the phenomena can shed more light.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
That's faster than a Dremel!
Fast in reference to what?
The way you use RPM, I'm guessing you're comparing it to an engine.
:(){
Someone once told me there is no such thing as a stupid question.
I win.
Odd. So, does the Schwarzschild radius actually shrink as a black hole spins faster? And for curiosity's sake, if a large, incredibly strong interstellar body were to clip one of these fast-spinning black holes (assuming it isn't stretched into oblivion), would the part that touches the event horizon simply be sheered off, like a knife cutting through butter, or would be ripped off, like tearing a chunk of bread from its whole?
Likewise, does anyone know if the speed at which a black hole spins has any relationship with how quickly it evaporates?
For info on the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite and instruments and the scientists and teams which made these observations possible, see http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/XTE.html.
Shakira!
95% of all sigs are made up.
I smell GNAA again. Haven't they learned already?
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Every black hole has a central singularity. These are points where mathematical modeling fails. That is because we assume every thing is 3-D. But the fact of the matter is these centers of black holes are singularities in 3-D but are actually simply transition points in higher dimensions..." [source]
Whoa
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Is there any data on its diameter/circumference? If it's spinning at 1000 RPS, and it's more than 186 miles around then wouldn't its surface (event horizon?) be traveling FTL?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There's one thing I don't understand about black holes. I've read that a black hole is so massive that space itself is warped around it. This warping means that a straight line that starts at the center will return to the center. It returns even though in its local context it is straight. But don't gravitons move like light? So how does the force of gravity escape? No light or other signal can escape... And yet gravity can! Weird.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
So fast you almost can't see it!
SARCASM my friend. SARCASM
Well:
If a gamma ray from far away could play today a blu-ray, then I would say that gamma ray was sellable on e-bay.
(and before an anonymous coward makes a "funny" response, no I am not gay...)
That is true. However, this is currently our best estimate, and the theory applied is pretty well-respected. It may be interesting to know that this finding supports a 1997 suggestion that this particular black hole spins very close to its maximum. The 1997 paper attempted to explain in theory the x-ray jets this black hole emits by suggesting it spins. In contrast, this new paper actually documents an attempt to measure the spin.
Anyway, assuming the theory is correct, their method sounds pretty plausible to me (also assuming I'm understanding the paper and article right).
Basically, the size of a black hole event horizon depends mainly on its mass. However, if the black hole is spinning (most or all are believed to due to conservation of momentum), the event horizon contracts due to frame dragging.
Of course, we can't directly see the event horizon to measure it like we can measure the sun's radius. These black holes are far too distant to resolve. But, matter falling into the black hole is heated up due to friction. Just before it passes the event horizon, it gets so hot it emits x-rays that are detectable from earth.
The clever part is that the energy of the x-rays is correlated to the emitting particle's radius from the center of the black hole, since as particles spiral in further, they heat up more and more. So if you know the mass and can measure the highest frequency of the emissions, you can calculate the rate of spin. Of course, finding the mass and measuring those x-rays is not at all trivial, and the final step of calculating the spin probably took the 6 researchers who published the paper a year or so worth of work.
"no I am not gay..."
But your dad DID say you were the best french kisser in town...
"But this one goes to 11!"
a massive spinning black hole contains a naked singularity through which matter can pass without experiencing tidal forces
with all the other one liners around.. / to know that anytime i see an article about black holes it makes me warm & fuzzy inside.
I just wanted
Kill your TV
Spinning black holes with hair would be sooo hot!
Just something that I've always wondered about.. how do you measure the spin of something that is essentially, for an outside observer, a spherical event horizon containing some amount of mass? I would think that in order for something to be meaningfully spinning, it's got to have something you can put your finger on so you can "sense" the spin. Is a black hole's gravity field not uniform, or what exactly does one mean by a BH's spin?
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
At 36,000 light years away, the black hole was spinning; who knows what's really going on now.
But... it could be just the right size that it becomes the mass of a 747 right before it collides with Pluto. Of course, then we also have all the radiation issues to worry about, too.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
For a second there I thought we had an article on the Bush Whitehouse. Must be 2nd fastest black hole, but don't worry because us Americans love to be #1.
While sensible space travelers have learned to avoid the area, primarily due to the god-awful noise of the singularity, Hollywood special-effects moguls are on a mission to record that same noise for an upcoming sequel to Star Wars. The exotic sounds of space are half the attraction, they say.
...omphaloskepsis often...
"in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos wherein reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth"
"the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose center sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demoniac flute held in nameless paws."
Wikipedia link
Seemed somehow fitting.
Now all we need to do is send in a Guiness Panel of Judges to validate its entry into the world records...
Did I just say that??
Don't black holes drag space time around with them? So relative to an observer they are going faster than c, but relative to the space they occupy they are not.