Death Star Black Holes Are Like Fictional Space Stations in 'Star Wars'

Supermassive black holes have been spotted by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)'s National Radio Astronomical Observatory's (NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array spinning around in different directions.

Supermassive Black Holes Send Particle Jets Into Space

According to a new study, jets left cavities in gas clouds, and each black hole was released in two streams that faced opposing directions.

Huge black holes, known as supermassive black holes, can be located at the centers of most galaxies, including the Milky Way. Their masses vary from millions to billions of times that of the sun, and they can spew narrow beams of particles thousands to millions of light-years away from the black hole at nearly the speed of light.

It is possible to determine the direction of the jets that 16 of these supermassive black holes fired by examining pairs of bubbles in space-based gas clouds. Astronomers can determine the direction the jets of black holes were facing at any given time by observing the cavities in the gas formed by the intense particle beams.

The researchers discovered that numerous black holes in the study had their jets pointing in a different direction than when they started, with some changing by as much as 90 degrees.

"We found that about a third of the beams are now pointing in completely different directions than before," study co-author Francesco Ubertosi, a researcher at the University of Bologna in Italy, said in a statement. "These Death Star black holes are swiveling around and pointing at new targets, like the fictional space station in Star Wars."

According to the researchers, the procedure takes tens of millions of years.

We define rapid as a significant direction change occurring within a few million years, given that these black holes are most likely over ten billion years old. According to study co-author Gerrit Schellenberger, a researcher at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA), altering the direction of the massive black hole beams in around a million years is comparable to altering the course of a new battleship in a matter of minutes.

Although the beams were previously believed to align with the axis around which the black hole revolves, the researchers are unsure of how the black holes can turn them to face other directions. One theory is that the direction this rotational axis faces could be altered by material entering the black hole at an angle other than parallel to its disk.

"It's possible that material rapidly falling towards the black holes at a different angle for long enough would drag their rotation axes in a different direction, causing the beams to point in a different direction," co-author Jan Vrtilek, a researcher at CFA.

Milkyway's Supermassive Black Hole Into Super Bowl Spirit

Earlier this year, scientists noticed that Sagittarius A* rotated so quickly that it had bent spacetime into the shape of an American football just in time for the Super Bowl.

It has been difficult to determine Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*'s spin rate. Most estimates have diverged greatly.

Now, astronomers working with Ruth Daly of Penn State University have calculated Sgr A*'s angular velocity, or spins per second, using the "outflow method."

Daly's team has previously detected Sgr A* using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescopes. The angular velocity was 60% of the maximum value that could be chosen from the speed of light. Otherwise, spacetime is distorted into an oval shape due to Sgr A*'s rapid rotation.

According to Daly, our research may resolve the debate over how quickly our galaxy's supermassive black hole is spinning. Our findings suggest that Sgr A* is rotating quickly, which is intriguing and has significant ramifications.

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