Comment on Scientists confirm that the first black hole ever imaged is actually spinning

• Smokeydabear94@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What would happen if one were to stop spinning? Could one even stop spinning?

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  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yes—it’s called the Penrose process.

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• hotdaniel@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I see. Thank you. So, you can use light to infer the mass, and then the volume information to infer the spin? Easy enough.

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  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That would be a general way, if we were close enough to observe the shape of the event horizon (which we aren’t).

    The article is describing another way, which only works in this case because the black hole is precessing so extremely: the changing axis of rotation is frame-dragging the polar jets along with it.

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