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Black holes are perhaps smaller than expected

Black holes are perhaps up to ten times smaller than previously thought. To this end an astrophysicist at the University of Göttingen come in a study on Thursday 17 February 2011, published in the prestigious journal Nature. The researchers analyzed the light emission of 37 galaxies and found it the first time clearly measure the velocity of matter in the immediate vicinity of the black hole.

(pug) black holes are perhaps up to ten times smaller than previously thought. To this end an astrophysicist at the University of Göttingen come in a study on Thursday 17 February 2011 appears in the prestigious journal Nature. Supermassive black holes are the cores of galaxies and have a mass of up to one billion solar masses. They are surrounded by a so-called accretion disk accumulates in the central matter of the galaxy. Matter at the inner edge of the disk crashes due to the high attraction of the black hole at very high speed into this. The researchers analyzed the light emission of 37 galaxies and found it the first time clearly measure the velocity of the disk matter. By the third Kepler's law can be based on the velocity and the distance of one another, the body mass of the black hole calculated. The resulting calculated masses are far lower than previously thought, and in proportion as the mass of black holes is to their size, they are therefore less than expected.

The scientists registered rotational speeds between several hundred and several thousand kilometers per second. Inwards, ie towards the black hole, the speed to - analog to move into our solar system the inner planets faster than the outer. Furthermore, the Göttingen astrophysicists were first statements about the geometry of the clouds of matter in the environs of a black hole: At high rotational speeds, the surrounding matter arranged in the form of a flat disk, for slowly rotating black holes in the form of a thick disk.

Citation: Wolfram Kollatschny, Matthias Zetzl. Broad-line active galactic nuclei rotate faster than narrow-line ones. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature09761.

via Information Wissenschaft