X-ray speed cameras clock superfast black hole

Douglas Heaven, reporter

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

This came close to being the ultimate speeding ticket. Two X-ray telescopes - NASA's NuSTAR and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton - teamed up to measure definitively, for the first time, the spin rate of a supermassive black hole. The speed demon in question is at the heart of NGC 1365, a spiral galaxy 60 million light years away.

Supermassive black holes are monsters - some with masses a billion times that of the sun - that have grown by devouring stars and gas from their host galaxy or merging with other black holes when galaxies collide.

NGC 1365's black hole weighs in at a relatively puny 2 million solar masses, but it is spinning at just shy of the speed of light.

As they grow, supermassive black holes pull in more and more space debris, forming a flat accretion disc that circles their event horizon at speeds that push the cosmic speed limit. This artist's impression shows the spinning disc and a jet of energised particles that the black hole spits from its gaping maw.

That speed can now be confirmed thanks to the twin measurements. X-rays reflected from the inner edge of the spinning accretion disc can be used to judge the speed of revolution.?But interstellar gas clouds can get in the way and throw off the readings. To be sure that this wasn't happening, the high- and low-energy X-ray readings of the two telescopes were combined to get a better view.

Journal reference: Nature, DOI 10.1038/nature11938

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