{"id":171390,"date":"2023-09-06T02:26:21","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T07:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/for-the-first-time-the-roiling-mass-circling-a-monster-black-hole-has-been-measured"},"modified":"2023-09-06T02:26:21","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T07:26:21","slug":"for-the-first-time-the-roiling-mass-circling-a-monster-black-hole-has-been-measured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/for-the-first-time-the-roiling-mass-circling-a-monster-black-hole-has-been-measured","title":{"rendered":"For The First Time, The Roiling Mass Circling a Monster Black Hole Has Been Measured"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7fGhCcDQQtU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>An active supermassive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/black-holes\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">black hole<\/a> is one of the greatest wonders in the cosmos.<\/p>\n<p>A dense, invisible object that can be billions of times the mass of our Sun is surrounded by a vast, churning disk and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/feed-your-black-hole-fever-with-the-first-direct-image-of-the-dusty-donut-surrounding-one\">torus<\/a> of material, blazing with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/it-s-official-global-collaboration-of-astronomers-have-taken-the-first-ever-black-hole-photo\">light<\/a> as it swirls down onto the black hole center. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/echoes-from-black-holes-could-be-the-next-big-thing-in-mapping-the-cosmos\">how big do these structures grow<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>For the first time, an unambiguous detection of near-infrared light reveals the outskirts of the massive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/eight-new-echoing-black-holes-have-been-found-in-the-milky-way\">accretion disk<\/a> surrounding a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Supermassive_black_hole\">supermassive black hole<\/a> hundreds of millions times our Sun\u2019s mass, in a galaxy called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/III_Zw_2\">III Zw 002<\/a> some 1.17 billion light-years away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An active supermassive black hole is one of the greatest wonders in the cosmos. A dense, invisible object that can be billions of times the mass of our Sun is surrounded by a vast, churning disk and torus of material, blazing with light as it swirls down onto the black hole center. But how big [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}