{"id":245058,"date":"2026-10-08T05:03:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T10:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/neutrons-rotating-black-holes-and-a-galactic-pevatron-at-the-center-of-the-milky-way"},"modified":"2026-10-08T05:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T10:03:31","slug":"neutrons-rotating-black-holes-and-a-galactic-pevatron-at-the-center-of-the-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/neutrons-rotating-black-holes-and-a-galactic-pevatron-at-the-center-of-the-milky-way","title":{"rendered":"Neutrons, rotating black holes, and a galactic PeVatron at the center of the Milky Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/neutrons-rotating-black-holes-and-a-galactic-pevatron-at-the-center-of-the-milky-way.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Galactic black holes are cosmic mitochondria, powerhouses of the universe. Most of the energy these supermassive black holes produce comes from the material surrounding them: superheated plasma in their accretion disks interacting with tremendous magnetic fields. But there is a more direct way to extract energy from a black hole. It\u2019s known as the Penrose process, and a new study asks whether we could discover a signature of this process.<\/p>\n<p>First proposed by Roger Penrose in 1969, the mechanism describes how you could extract energy directly from a rotating black hole, thus decreasing its total mass. This is different from the usual mechanism in which black holes generate power as a byproduct of consuming matter and increasing mass. It relies on a feature of rotating black holes known as the ergosphere.<\/p>\n<p>As a black hole rotates, it drags space around it. This frame-dragging effect is most powerful very close to the black hole. The ergosphere is a region around the black hole where the frame dragging is so strong you can\u2019t counter it. Even if you had a spaceship capable of approaching the speed of light, you couldn\u2019t overcome the rotating frame. You will rotate around the black hole no matter what. Because of this, the timey-wimey effects of relativity get a little mucky-wucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Galactic black holes are cosmic mitochondria, powerhouses of the universe. Most of the energy these supermassive black holes produce comes from the material surrounding them: superheated plasma in their accretion disks interacting with tremendous magnetic fields. But there is a more direct way to extract energy from a black hole. It\u2019s known as the Penrose [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245058","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\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}