Tag: supermassive black holes
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Using Black Holes to Measure Dark Energy, Like a BOSS
Far from being invisible, black holes are among some of the brightest objects in the Universe. The black holes themselves aren’t emitting light, but the matter they draw in heats up and much of it shoots back out in powerful jets. When that happens, the black hole is known as a quasar, and it can…
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Measuring black hole rotation halfway across the Universe
Astronomers measured the rotation of a black hole from halfway across the Universe. Astronomers have now used gravitational magnification to measure the rotation rate of a supermassive black hole in a very distant galaxy. From four separate images of the same black hole, R.C. Reis, M.T. Reynolds, J.M. Miller, and D.J. Walton found it was…
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How did the biggest black holes form?
The most massive known object in the cosmos is the black hole at the center of M87, a huge galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. While most large galaxies (including the Milky Way) harbor supermassive black holes, the very largest are interesting. That’s because galaxies and their black holes seem to share a history, based on…
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The week in review (October 13 – 19)
I’m at GeekGirlCon this weekend, so I’m busy with non-writing activities as part of the DIY Science Zone. Thanks to our Fearless Leader Dr. “Nick Fury” Rubidium for putting our part of the event together! Where Nature Hides the Darkest Mystery of All (Nautilus): Even though there’s no solid barrier, the event horizon of a…
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The Solar System boundary and the week in review (September 8-14)
‘Twas a busy week! High-resolution observations show how black hole jets churn galactic gas (Ars Technica): One portion of my PhD thesis involved galactic feedback. That’s the process by which jets from black holes at the center of galaxies push material away, potentially affecting star formation and other activity. This article addressed the observation of…
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The week in review (August 25-31)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of stories I wrote this week, wherever they hide. A tour of physics, Angry Birds style (Double X Science): The odds are good that you’ve played Angry Birds, even if (like me) you don’t own a device that will run the game. My colleague Rhett Allain wrote a book for…
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Black hole sez: I maded you a planet, but I eated it
Let the record show: I am the first writer for Ars Technica to use the phrase “om nom nom”. Astronomers caught a supermassive black hole in the act of disrupting and devouring part of a large planet or small brown dwarf (a starlike object that isn’t massive enough for nuclear fusion). The giveaway was a…
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Measuring the spin of a black hole using X-rays
The region near a black hole is one of the most extreme environments in the Universe, but historically it’s been hard to study directly. Using the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR telescopes, astronomers have measured the rotation of gas near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy. They found that this…
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Think of the biggest black hole in the Universe. Now make it 10 times bigger….
The biggest black holes in the Universe reside at the centers of the largest galaxies. However, a new study suggests they may be proportionally even larger, compared with other galaxies. The bright cluster galaxies (BCGs) are huge galaxies found in the middle of galaxy clusters, where they grew by merging with and absorbing smaller galaxies.…
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A big black hole in a small galaxy
Most galaxies we know of have a supermassive black hole at their cores. These black holes may be millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun, but they are generally proportionate to the size of their host galaxies—or more properly, the central bulge of those galaxies. Up until recently, I wouldn’t have said…
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