A black hole that flips on its side has been found by astronomers

Without a doubt, the universe is one of the most mysterious places. Every day, scientists are trying to discover its properties, so the information is constantly updated. On this occasion, researchers from the Tuorla Observatory have discovered a peculiarity of the black hole: it is tilted.

frequently, The axis of rotation of a central massive object is largely aligned with the axis of rotation of its satellites. This is true for the solar system: The planets revolve around the sun in a plane that roughly coincides with the equatorial plane of the sun. The tilt of the Sun’s axis of rotation relative to the Earth’s orbital axis is only 7 degrees.

Monitoring researchers at the Torla Observatory in Finland It is the first reliable measurement that shows a significant difference between the axis of rotation of a black hole and the axis of its orbit from a binary system. The difference between the axes measured by researchers in A binary star system called MAXI J1820 + 070 over 40°.

“The prediction of alignment is largely invalid for strange objects, such as the X-ray binaries of black holes. Black holes formed in these systems as a result of a cosmic cataclysm.: collapse of a huge star. Now see The black hole pulls matter from the nearby, lighter star that orbits it. “We see optical radiation and bright X-rays as the last moments of infallible material, as well as radio emission from relativistic jets ejected from the system,” says Juri Potanin, professor of astronomy at the University of Turku and lead author of the publication.

By following these jets, the researchers were able to determine the direction of the black hole’s rotation axis. When the amount of gas falling from the companion star into the black hole began to decrease, the dimness of the system dimmed, as much of the system’s light comes from the companion star. In this way, the researchers were able to measure the inclination of the orbit using spectroscopic techniques, and this roughly coincided with the inclination of the ballistics.

“To determine the 3D orientation of the orbit, one also needs to know the position angle of the system in the sky, that is, how the system rotates with respect to the north direction in the sky. This was measured using polarimetric techniques,” Juri Potanin says.

Results, Posted in to knowopened up interesting perspectives towards studies of black hole formation and evolution of such systems, as such extreme disequilibrium is difficult to achieve in many black hole formation and binary evolution scenarios.

“The difference of more than 40 degrees between the orbital axis and the rotation of the black hole was completely unexpected. Scientists have often They hypothesized that this difference was very small when they modeled the behavior of matter In time space curved around a black hole. Existing models are already complex, and now the new findings are forcing us to add a new dimension to them,” says Potanin.

The main discovery was made using the in-house built DIPol-UF polarimeter installed on the Northern Optical Telescope, owned by the University of Turku with Aarhus University in Denmark.

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