Theories of black hole formation have been challenged by the discovery of a tilted black hole.
The black hole and its companion star are some 10,000 light-years away from Earth. The Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted the system. The black hole behaves in ways that defy expectations according to recent optical observations by the Nordic Optical Telescope.
uri Poutanen discovered that the black hole spins around an axis that is tilted by at least one degree. Poutanen and his colleagues said in a statement that it was the largest misalignment ever reported.
What happens at the center of a black hole?
Poutanen told Space.com that they observed a black hole X-raybinary MAXI J1820+070 with a high-precision optical polarimeter. The black hole spin orientation can be obtained from the radio and X-ray observations of the jets.
The scientists were able to determine the angle between the axis of the black hole spin and the axis of the binaries.
Black holes that are suck material from stars should be rotating around aligned axes that are parallel to their shared plane, according to theoretical models.
The scientists said in the statement that they used to think that the axes could only be perfectly aligned.
What caused the discrepancy in MAXI J1820+070 remains a mystery. The black hole in MAXI J1820+070 must have received a kick during the explosion that gave rise to it, according to the scientists.
The authors found it impossible for this to happen at a later stage, as the accretion of material between two bodies of a system always bring axes closer into alignment.
The scientists said that the finding could have consequences for black hole science.
The paper was published in the journal Science.
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