This Weirdly Tilted Black Hole Could Upend Our Understanding of How They Form

Black holes could make a strong case for being the most fascinating phenomena in the whole Universe, and scientists are constantly discovering more about the way that they work and behave.

A new study of a black hole some 10,000 light-years away from Earth offers an example that challenges the understanding of how black holes form.

The angle of this black hole, in the MAXI J1820+070 system, suggests that there are forces that we have yet to account for when black holes first come into being.

MAXI J1820+070 has a star and a black hole that are rotating around each other. Their axes would be aligned to the plane.

Not so with MAXI J1820+070. The spin axis of the black hole was positioned away from the plane of the system by at least 40 degrees. It is surprising since these angles should match in most scenarios.

Astronomers use the alignment of the rotation axis to model black holes. If that is not the case in some systems, we need to adjust our thinking about black holes and other readings.

The researchers wrote in their published paper that their results show the need to treat the misalignment angle as a free parameters when measuring black hole mass and spins.

Researchers used optical polarimetric observations to take readings of the optical and X-ray radiation coming off the accretion disk, the swirling matter that gathers around the black hole as it strips mass away from its companion star.

The MAXI J1820+070 system has an artist impression. Patat et al. are in Science.

Something has happened in the very beginning of the black hole's creation before the system has had a chance to right itself, according to the 40-degree reading. It is likely to be related to the formation process, although the researchers are not sure yet.

Black holes are thought to get kicks when they are created from giant stellar explosions, which can sometimes break the system apart. Something else is happening in the formation process that we haven't considered, and it seems that the same kick could create a black hole.

The black hole in MAXI J1820+070 offers more evidence and a direct reading of how out of line the black hole could be.

The European Southern Observatory's Ferdinando Patat and the University of Padova'sMichela Mapelli wrote commentary on the new study.

The study challenges the current understanding of how black holes can be formed and indicates the presence of a powerful kick produced by the supernova that generated the black hole.

The research has been published.