We thought black holes rotated in the same plane as their orbit. One that is tilted by at least 40 degrees suggests our understanding of their behaviour needs an update
. If an object is tilted relative to its orbit, it can imply something unusual happened during its formation or history.at the University of Turku, Finland, and his colleagues have realised a black hole about 10,000 light years from Earth is tilted by at least 40 degrees from the plane in which it is revolving with its binary partner, a star with about half the mass of the sun.
This tilt could explain the observation of strange signals – called quasi-periodic oscillations – that come from black holes. QPOs are peaks in intensity at certain frequencies. A popular model suggests these signals are a result of misaligned spins and orbits, as is the case for MAXI J1820+070, which also produces QPOs.
While it isn’t clear exactly how this black hole acquired such a tilt, it is probable that it came from instabilities when its parent supernova collapsed, says Poutanen. “During the asymmetric collapse, you produce a kick, which means that you produce [momentum], for example with neutrinos, which is ejected in one direction more than another.”
Astronomers often assume that the orbital plane and spin axis are aligned when calculating the mass and spin of black holes from observations. But if this assumption isn’t reliable, then those calculations could be incorrect. “If the tilt is 40 degrees, or even more, then the results you gather may be completely or significantly wrong,” says
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