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Astrophysics

Black holes in a spin

Nature volume 494, pages 432–433 (2013)Cite this article

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The implications of the X-ray emission patterns of galaxies hosting supermassive black holes have been contentious. Data from NASA's NuSTAR telescope seem to resolve the issue — at least for one such galaxy. See Letter p.449

Why should we care so much about these supermassive black holes or their spin? To start with, their very presence is a mystery that draws in the curious astrophysicist. It now seems clear that the first black-hole 'seeds' were created just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, although the process that created them is still not understood. Weighing in at a mere 10,000 solar masses or so, these seeds then gorged upon the gas within the young galaxies and grew rapidly into the behemoths that we see today. Furthermore, our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution is intimately linked to our understanding of supermassive black holes. The energy released by a growing supermassive black hole can be so powerful that it disrupts the normal growth of the host galaxy; in extreme cases, the AGN can terminate all subsequent growth of the galaxy.

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Figure 1: Spiral galaxy NGC 1365.

ESO

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  1. Christopher S. Reynolds is in the Department of Astronomy and the Joint Space Science Institute, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.,

    Christopher S. Reynolds

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  1. Christopher S. Reynolds
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Correspondence to Christopher S. Reynolds.

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Reynolds, C. Black holes in a spin. Nature 494, 432–433 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/494432a

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