How old is black hole

A very compact source of radio waves lies at the galaxy's heart: a supermassive black hole estimated to weigh some 6. Event Horizon: Extending at least seven billion miles around the supermassive black hole in M87, this is the boundary beyond which not even light cannot escape. Accretion Disk: A whirling disk of superheated gas and dust likely spins at near light-speed around the M87 black hole. The disk emits heat, radio noise, and huge x-ray flares—some of which stretch more than a hundred thousand light-years long.

The towering jet forms as superheated gas swirling around the central black hole gets shot out along intense magnetic field lines. As electrons spiral along these lines, they generate radiation across many wavelengths , from radio to x-rays. Matter swirling around a black hole forms a glowing disk, and since part of that disk is moving toward us, it causes part of the circle to be a bit brighter.

Problematically, though, that mass estimate is much larger than the number derived from the motion of orbiting gas, which is the easier, more commonly used technique when trying to weigh a black hole. Just as shadows or silhouettes often have fuzzy edges, so does the dark circle in the new image.

No one really knows what, if anything, is at the core of a black hole, called the singularity. This puncture in the very fabric of the universe is surrounded by a curved, exotic expanse of space-time from which nothing escapes. However, the new image should help astronomers hoping to understand more about the outside of M87, especially its fountains of extremely energetic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light.

A black hole blasting matter into space might sound paradoxical, given that they generally tend to inhale matter, but these exotic objects are nothing if not baffling. Multiple observatories previously aimed their eyes at the black hole and tried to untangle the engine behind its jet, studying it in wavelengths spanning the electromagnetic spectrum. Such jets seem to originate from the disk of matter swirling around the event horizon, in a region called the ergosphere, Markoff says.

Here, space-time never stands still and is perpetually rotating. Interactions between those elements on microscopic scales somehow unleash the enormous power contained in the jets. All rights reserved. Insatiable Force. Although their name suggests emptiness, black holes are the densest objects in the universe, giving them enormous gravitational pull.

The oldest, most distant "supermassive" black hole and quasar in the universe have both been discovered, astronomers announced Tuesday. At more than 13 billion years old, the black hole and quasar are the earliest yet seen, giving astronomers insight into the formation of massive galaxies in the early universe. Quasars are huge, incredibly bright celestial objects located in the center of galaxies. They are the most-distant known celestial objects and are crucial to understanding the early universe.

The quasar, named J, formed just million years after the Big Bang some 13 billion light years away. Post a Comment. Get the latest space stories from CNET every week. Quasars are extremely bright objects -- the brightest in the universe.

They lie at the center of galaxies, but at their own center lies a supermassive black hole, millions to billions of times more massive than the sun. The intense gravity surrounding the black hole captures gas and dust and potentially even rips apart stars, leaving a trail of debris in a disk that encircles it. The debris whips around at incredible speed and expels extreme amounts of energy, which observers on Earth can see across the electromagnetic spectrum as bright light.

The observations enabled researchers to confirm the distance with high precision and examine some of the properties of the supermassive black hole at the quasar's center.