You
wouldn't want to eat one, but you might take comfort in the new knowledge that
a black hole and its surrounding material take the shape of a doughnut regardless of the
mass of the black hole itself.
Black holes
can't be seen, but astronomers detect them by noting how other objects are
affected by the tremendous gravity created in these small
spheres of space. Intense radiation can be emitted from the area
immediately surrounding a black hole as incoming material is accelerated to a
significant fraction of light-speed and gets superheated.
"This
should be a very messy and complicated environment, but the stuff flowing onto
different black holes looks the same, no matter how massive the black hole
is," said Barry McKernan, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community
College, City University of New York.
McKernan
and colleagues analyzed data collected for 245 active
galactic nuclei, which contain supermassive black holes at their cores.
These black
holes feed on infalling gas and can emit powerful radiation beams that
shine with the energy of billions of stars. The black holes studied weighed
between 1 million and 100 million times the mass of the sun.
The
researchers specifically measured the X-rays and infrared light around these
black holes, testing a hypothesis about the relationship between these two
types of extreme radiation.
They knew
that X-rays should come from hot material close to the black hole, while
infrared light should come from warm material more distant from the black hole.
This pattern
allowed the researchers to tell if matter around the black hole was being
observed face-on (looking directly down onto the black hole ringed by X-rays
and infrared light) or edge-on (seeing only the side of the doughnut of
material). Some of the infrared light should also come from part of the
doughnut that has been fried by X-ray bombardment.
By
comparing the proportion of X-rays to infrared light coming from around a black
hole, McKernan and his colleagues indirectly figured out how material may be distributed
around the black hole. After partitioning the data into those observed edge-on
and those observed face-on, the team found that 90 percent of the active
galactic nuclei observable face-on had basically the same proportion of X-rays
to infrared light.
The
conclusion: No matter the heft of the black hole, its surrounding material took
the shape of a doughnut with a black hole at its center.
"Now
we know they all look like doughnuts, and the same kind of doughnut too,"
McKernan said. "The lack of variety would disappoint Homer Simpson."
advertisement
