14 DAY TRIAL // Astronomers and astrophysicist recently conducted a series of observations that made them suggest something out of the ordinary. They say that some black holes spin “backwards,” and that this motion actually controls the faith of the galaxies the black hole inhabits. This control mechanism is powered by jet emissions of a mysterious type of plasma, the experts add. The dark behemoths are known for the fact that they spew out massive amounts of radiation, but thus far their origin has remained elusive. The new effort focused on determining how the radiation form, Space reports.
Almost all massive galaxies that astronomers investigated, using ground- or space-based telescopes, revealed a massive or super-massive black hole at their cores. These structures have such a mass that they are millions to billions of times heavier than our Sun. The same studies also demonstrated that the holes emit jets of highly energetic radiation from what could be referred to as their poles, which travel in the opposite direction to each other. These are widely considered as playing a very important part in the overall Universe, as they inject huge amounts of energy into it.
This in turn appears to affect the rate at which stars form, as well as their number and types, the new study proposes, through precisely controlling the amount of energy injected in the Universe. Using the Suzaku telescope, the experts compared dozens of galaxies that contain active black holes at their core to others whose black holes do not spew out radiation. The investigation determined that the jets only appeared in the case of BH that spun around in the opposite direction to their accretion disks. These are structures that form around the black hole, as matter begins to spin around it before finally passing through the event horizon.
The scientists, including Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research expert Dan Evans, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), say that these opposite spins in the system lead to massive distortions and the warping of space-time. This in turn forces some of the matter in the accretion disk to become fuel for one of these high-energy jets. This scenario is not very implausible, as supercomputer models have already demonstrated that a retrograde black hole can form after two galaxies merge, or collide. The direction of the spin in any of them depends on factors such as galaxy size and collision speed.
“Picture trying to get as close to the edge of a ceiling fan with a pencil in your hand without hitting the fan. It's much easier to get close if you're co-rotating with the fan, moving the same direction as it, as the fan creates a sucking effect. If you're moving in the opposite direction, counter-rotating with the spin of that fan, the air is effectively pushed out at you, generating an opposing force, and you get much further from that fan. The same thing happens with spinning black holes, where the force you feel is roughly analogous to the wind,” Evans states.