The celestial formation spins
(FOX NEWS) – After two decades of observations, a supermassive black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy was discovered spinning, bolstering Albert Einstein’s century-old theories of general relativity, an astrophysicist told Fox News.
A black hole is a region in space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape, according to NASA. After stitching together images from observatories across the Earth, scientists discovered the black hole’s jet — beams of particles emanating from the void’s axis – were moving, confirming that the mass was spinning, according to a Sept. 27 study published in the journal Nature.
“After the success of black hole imaging in this galaxy with the Event Horizon Telescope, whether this black hole is spinning or not has been a central concern among scientists,” said astrophysicist and study co-author Kazuhiro Hada from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. “Now anticipation has turned into certainty. This monster black hole is indeed spinning.”
The supermassive black hole resides about 55 million light-years away in the center of the nearby Messier 87 galaxy — also known as M87, according to the study. Scientists found the black hole’s jet moves in a predictable 11-year cycle, which over time allowed them to determine that the celestial formation spins.
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