Supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is warping space-time – and it could reveal how our galaxy formed

A supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is spinning so fast that it is altering space-time.

The black hole, called Sagittarius A*, is located 26,000 light-years away from Earth and drags the surrounding space-time with it, crushing it like a football.

Sagittarius A*’s rapid rotation is important because it means that much of its mass was created by accretion, that is, radio waves and X-rays in the material and gases around black holes, called the accretion disk.

Black holes with lower spin values ​​are usually formed when smaller black holes merge.

The discovery, made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory telescope, could reveal the formation and evolution of galaxies, including our own.

The difference in rotation speed is quite large, as the higher speed will help scientists measure the center of the Earth system more accurately.

By measuring the properties of the galaxy, scientists can learn more about its history and structure, test theories, “or even infer the existence of some very interesting and intriguing objects like wormholes,” says Dejan Stojkovic, professor of cosmology at the University at Buffalo. was not involved in the research CNN.

Black holes are found at the center of almost all galaxies, with Sagittarius A* being no different – ​​but its rotational speed makes it unique and causes what is known as the Lense-Thirring precession.

Lens-drying precession is the rotation of a central mass that twists surrounding space-time and perturbs the orbits of other nearby masses.

“With this rotation, Sagittarius A* will dramatically change the shape of space-time in its environment,” Ruth Daly, lead author of the study and professor of physics at Penn State University, told CNN.

‘We are used to thinking and living in a world in which all spatial dimensions are equivalent – ​​the distance to the ceiling and the distance to the wall and the distance to the floor… they are all more or less linear, it is not the case that the one that is. totally flattened compared to the others…’

She added: ‘If you have a rapidly rotating black hole, the space-time around it is not symmetrical – the spinning black hole drags the entire space-time with it.

“It shrinks space-time and it looks a bit like a football.”

Sagittarius A* is located at the center of our Milky Way, 260,000 light-years from Earth

The discovery was made by physicists led by Penn State University, who showed that the supermassive black hole that drags space-time is built on Albert Einstein’s framework.

Einstein presented a theory that the speed of light, to be constant, must be relative to time, something that physicists attributed to the spinning of black holes.

Space-time was an essential development in Einstein’s theory of relativity, which explains how speed affects time and space.

His theory is that space and time are connected, meaning that as objects move through space, time will speed up if the object is moving slowly, or slow down if it is moving fast.

“Einstein created a beautiful machine, but he didn’t exactly leave us a user’s manual,” wrote astrophysicist Paul Sutter on Space.com.

“Just to put it plainly, general relativity is so complex that when someone discovers a solution to the equations, they get the solution named after them and become semi-legendary in their own right,” he added.

Since the discovery of the first black hole in 1964, scientists have wondered how and when it formed, but it wasn’t until four years ago that they were able to capture the appearance of a black hole.

A photo of the black hole M87*, released in April, is located 53 million light-years from Earth and is believed to be 13.2 billion years old.

Scientists compared the size of M87* (left) with Sagittarius A* (right) and found that although M87* is larger, the latter’s rotational speed makes it unique.

And scientists released the first image of Sagittarius A* in September.

The new study compared the two black holes and their spin values ​​and found M87*’s maximum spin value of 1 and Sagittarius A*’s spin value between .84 and .96, with the lowest value being zero.

The researchers used the outflow method to determine how fast Sagittarius A* spins and why it spins faster.

The black hole M87* is larger than the Sagittarius A* and rotates at a maximum rotation speed of one.

Although M87* is much larger, the smaller size of Sagittarius A* allows it to rotate more frequently than M87*, resulting in warped space-time.

“Sagittarius A*” spins much faster (comparatively), not because it has higher turning momentum, but because it has less distance to travel when it spins once,” Daly explained.

“The outflow associated with M87* is much more powerful in both absolute and relative terms compared to that associated with Sagittarius A*,” the study said, adding that the supermassive black hole spins more times than one rotation of M87*.

Since the initial findings, scientists have been working to uncover the history of these riddles and believe Sagittarius A* will lead to more discoveries about how and when they arise.

Daly told CNN that the change in space and time does not threaten humanity, but said: “It is a wonderful tool for understanding the role that black holes play in the formation and evolution of galaxies.”