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Spinning Black Holes and MCG
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| Title |
Spinning Black Holes and MCG-6-30-15 |
| Explanation |
What makes the core of galaxy MCG-6-30-15 so bright? Some astronomers believe [ http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/ESAL2MZK0TC_index_0.html ] the answer is a massive spinning black hole [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010508.html ]. If so, this would be the first observational indication [ http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast23oct_1.htm ] that it is possible to make a black hole [ http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html ] act like a battery [ http://www.howstuffworks.com/battery.htm ] -- and tap into its rotational energy. MCG-6-30-15 [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/news/news.html ] is a distant galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/spiral_galaxies.html ] that has recently been observed with the orbiting XMM-Newton satellite [ http://sci.esa.int/content/doc/9f/14495_.htm ] in X-ray light [ http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_astro/xrays.html ]. These observations [ http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0110520 ] show the galaxy's nucleus [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010701.html ] not only to be very bright but also to show evidence that much of the light is climbing out of a deep gravitational well [ http://www.physics.gmu.edu/classinfo/astr103/CourseNotes/Text/Lec06/Lec06_pt2_txt_relativityGeneral.htm#19.2.3. ]. A spinning black hole could explain both effects. A strong magnetic field [ http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/space/mag_field.html ] could be the mediator transferring [ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1977MNRAS.179..433B ] rotational energy from the black hole to the surrounding gas. Pictured above [ http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011015blackhole.html ] is an artist's illustration of a black hole [ http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoles.html ] surrounded by an accretion disk [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991219.html ]. For clarity, the illustration does not include distorting gravitational lens effects [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html ]. |
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