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Sunday, February 11, 2024
Milky Way's black hole may be spinning 'football-shaped' spacetime warp - astrophysics
Studies of the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way,Sgr A*,were made using the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Very Large Array,an array of radio telescopes in New Mexico.
The singularity of a black hole was predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity,yet was never confirmed by observation in his lifetime.A singularity has zero volume yet infinite density,hence it bends spacetime to an infinite extent.As you approach a singularity,time slows down from an observer's point of view,but not from the one being observed's point of view (relativity).It slows down so much it virtually stops,with one minute being approximately 1,700,000 years long.This is experienced by astronauts in low Earth orbit to a minor extent because the Earth's large mass causes ripples in spacetime.Even light,which has no mass,must follow the curvature of space in the presence of a black hole.Hence astronomers detected X-ray flashes on the opposite side of a black hole,confirming Einstein's theory yet again.
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