Astronomers observe a black hole affecting the fabric of space-time, confirming Einstein’s predictions and providing new clues about rotation and extreme gravity, writes Space.
Astronomers have caught a rare phenomenon in which a supermassive black hole alters the structure of spacetime itself, confirming a century-old prediction from Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, reports Noi.md with reference to .
The discovery, recently published in the journal Science Advances, focuses on a star being torn apart by a rapidly rotating supermassive black hole, generating a tidal disruption event (TDE), known as AT2020afhd. Scientists have observed oscillations in the star’s orbit, caused by a phenomenon called Lense–Thirring precession, whereby a rotating black hole drags the spacetime around it.
The effect was first predicted in 1918 by physicists Josef Lense and Hans Thirring, but until now it has been extremely difficult to observe directly.
The researchers analyzed X-ray data provided by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift space observatory and radio signals collected by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. They detected synchronized fluctuations in the X-ray and radio emissions, which repeat every 20 Earth days, indicating that both the accretion disk and the associated jet move oscillatory at the same rate. This coordinated motion provided strong evidence that the observed variations are caused by the frame-dragging effect, not by changes in emitted energy.
During these events, stellar material forms an accretion disk around the black hole, and some of the matter is ejected in extremely powerful jets close to the speed of light. Because these structures are very close to the black hole, their motion is strongly influenced by relativistic effects predicted by Einstein’s theory, observable only under such extreme conditions as the warping of space-time.
Scientists say this observation provides a new method to measure the rotation of black holes and better understand how these cosmic objects feed and generate jets.
