Milky Way's Black Hole: May Be Spinning Football-Shaped Spacetime Warp

Space.com

The Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole at the core of the Milky Galaxy may be "warping the spacetime surrounding it into a shape that can look like a football," according to the Chandra X-ray Telescope team.   Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

Transcript

00:00Music

00:03Visit Chandra's beautiful universe.

00:06Sagittarius A-Star

00:10The supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way

00:14is spinning so quickly that it is warping the space-time surrounding it

00:18into a shape that can look like a football.

00:22This result was made using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory,

00:27an X-ray telescope in space,

00:29and the NSF's Very Large Array,

00:32an array of radio telescopes in New Mexico.

00:36Astronomers call the giant black hole Sagittarius A-Star,

00:40or Sag A-Star for short.

00:43It is located about 26,000 light-years away from Earth,

00:46in the center of our galaxy.

00:49Black holes have two fundamental properties.

00:52The first is their mass, or how much they weigh.

00:55The second is their spin, or how quickly they rotate.

00:59Determining either of these two values

01:02tells scientists a great deal about any black hole and how it behaves.

01:06While astronomers are confident they know how much mass Sag A-Star has,

01:11about 4 million times that of the Sun,

01:14they have had a harder time trying to nail down just how fast Sag A-Star is spinning.

01:19This new study involves a method that uses X-ray and radio data

01:23to determine how quickly Sag A-Star is spinning,

01:26based on how material is flowing towards and away from the black hole.

01:30The results show that Sag A-Star is spinning very fast.

01:34In fact, scientists think that it is rotating so quickly

01:38that it is warping spacetime around it,

01:41into a shape that looks like a football.

01:44Spacetime is the term for the combined concept of time

01:47and the three dimensions of space.

01:50Scientists have known for a long time that black holes can do this,

01:53but this is strong evidence that our Milky Way's black hole is having this effect.

01:59How quickly a black hole is spinning also has other important implications.

02:04For example, a black hole's spin can act as an important source of energy.

02:10Spinning supermassive black holes can produce narrow outflows

02:14in the form of jets when their spin energy is extracted.

02:18Sag A-Star is currently rather quiet,

02:21but this new finding means that it could become more active in the future.

02:26Scientists will continue to use Chandra to study Sag A-Star

02:30to better understand this black hole and its role in our galaxy.

02:35Transcription by ESO. Translation by —

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