Black hole spin speed revealed in new study of churning space-time
Scientists have calculated the speed of a spinning supermassive black hole by studying the 'spaghettified' remains of a star it destroyed.–
The "wobbling" remains of a star that suffered a grisly death at the maw of a supermassive black hole has helped reveal the speed at which its cosmic predator spins.
Supermassive black holes are believed to be born through successive mergers of smaller black holes
The doomed star at the heart of this research was ripped apart in brutal fashion by a supermassive black hole during a so-called tidal disruption event
That's called "spaghettification," and its a process that turns the star into a strand of stellar pasta — but, crucially, not all of it is gobbled by the destructive black hole.
Some of this material is blown away, while some of it wraps around the black hole
Furthermore, when supermassive black holes spin, they drag along with them the very fabric of spacetime
Now, a team of researchers has discovered that the "wobble" of that accretion disk can be used to determine how fast the central black hole is spinning.