{"id":202269,"date":"2024-12-23T23:14:15","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T05:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/astronomers-have-measured-a-black-hole-spinning-at-half-the-speed-of-light"},"modified":"2024-12-23T23:14:15","modified_gmt":"2024-12-24T05:14:15","slug":"astronomers-have-measured-a-black-hole-spinning-at-half-the-speed-of-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/astronomers-have-measured-a-black-hole-spinning-at-half-the-speed-of-light","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers have measured a black hole spinning at half the speed of light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-have-measured-a-black-hole-spinning-at-half-the-speed-of-light2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have discovered a new way to study black holes, the mysterious cosmic entities that destroy anything in their path. By observing X-ray bursts from a star being torn apart by a black hole, researchers calculated the black hole\u2019s spin rate for the first time using X-rays. The black hole was found spinning at nearly 50 percent of the speed of light. This research, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aar7480\"><em>Science<\/em><\/a>, opens new possibilities for understanding black holes\u2019 behavior and evolution.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery dates back to November 2014, when astronomers observed a supermassive black hole in a galaxy 300 million light years away. This black hole ripped apart a star that had ventured too close, an event known as a tidal disruption flare. The flare generated intense bursts of X-rays that were visible from Earth. Since black holes themselves don\u2019t produce many X-rays, researchers saw an opportunity to study this flare closely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers have discovered a new way to study black holes, the mysterious cosmic entities that destroy anything in their path. By observing X-ray bursts from a star being torn apart by a black hole, researchers calculated the black hole\u2019s spin rate for the first time using X-rays. The black hole was found spinning at nearly [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202269","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}