Scientists say that Milky Way’s black hole is spinning incredibly fast

Our Milky Way Galaxy is home to billions of stars and planets. Located at its center lies a supermassive black hole, an entity with an unfathomable amount of gravity, holding together the entire collection of stars and planets through its immense gravitational pull. Remarkably, scientists have recently made a groundbreaking discovery: this supermassive black hole is spinning at an astonishingly rapid rate.

But before delving into this discovery, let’s grasp a few fundamental concepts.

When we stand on the Earth’s surface, our weight is not solely dictated by gravity; it also involves the centrifugal force generated by the Earth’s rotation. The centrifugal force strives to “fling” us away from the Earth, but gravity, acting in the opposite direction, keeps us firmly grounded. The presence of this centrifugal force means that our weight at the equator is slightly less than our weight at the poles, with the difference amounting to a mere 0.3 percent. In the vast expanse of the universe, every rotating object has a maximum rotation rate, including celestial bodies.

This principle applies to black holes as well. However, the key distinction is that, unlike planets, black holes lack a physical surface. Nonetheless, they too possess a maximum rotation rate.

Due to its colossal gravity, a black hole warps the spacetime fabric around it. The rotation of a black hole is characterized by this distortion.

In Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the spin of a black hole is represented by a property denoted as ‘a’, which can have a value of either 0 or 1. A value of 0 signifies minimal spin, while 1 indicates the maximum possible spin.

As reported by ScienceAlert, a team of scientists conducted an analysis of radio and X-ray observations of the black hole in order to estimate its spin.

The findings revealed that the ‘a’ value of our black hole falls within the range of 0.84 to 0.96. This value is remarkably close to 1, signifying a near-maximal speed. Consequently, the scientists have emphasized the incredible rotational speed of the black hole situated at the heart of our galaxy.