Spinning Black Holes

A pulsing black hole in the centre of a distant galaxy sheds light on black hole and galaxy formation. How fast are black holes rotating and how does that rotation change over its life-span?

Huge thanks to Prof. Geraint Lewis and study author Dr. Dheeraj Pasham.

A loud quasi-periodic oscillation after a star is disrupted
by a massive black hole

Special thanks to Patreon supporters:
Donal Botkin, James M Nicholson, Michael Krugman, Nathan Hansen, Ron Neal, Stan Presolski, Terrance Shepherd

Animations by Alan Chamberlain and courtesy of NASA

[skergrl]

I'm doing my PhD on black holes & I just finished doing an analysis of the black hole spin in GRS 1915+105 (it was actually the first BH in the table of spins you showed). I was super impressed by how accurate everything in your video was! I study all of this for a living right now lol. I also loved the animations - I always have trouble finding a good accretion disk animation which shows how the ISCO shrinks as the black hole spin increases. A fantastic & informative video.

[smartereveryday]

My flight is taking off. I want to know about black holes!
EDIT: HOLY COW MAN I can't imagine how much research you did for this! I've always wondered how star diameters are approximated. Thank you so much for this! Bravo!

[Holobrine]

4:57 Should have chosen diameter, so it would be d_isco

Edit: Please sign the petition in the replies if you support this cause

[svenmedyona]

When I was 17, I listed all my dream jobs (there were 18 of them). Being a physicist was at the top of that list, teaching number two. Despite living that latter profession, I still enjoy videos like this. Thanks Veritasium for keeping my interest alive. I may not understand it all, but I love it regardless.

[dcterr]

It's pretty amazing to me that just 50 years ago, many scientists doubted that black holes existed, whereas now, not only have they been experimentally verified, but we're learning about many of their properties as well as their origins.

[rfldss]

These acronyms are getting better every year.

[erenyalcn]

Big stars : "exist"
Blackhole: Its free real estate

[joschkazimdars]

I found black holes always scary, but finding out they spin at insane speed makes them so much awesomely horrifyingly more scary for me.

[TheRealGuywithoutaMustache]

I took up astronomy in college and they never talked about interesting stuff like this

[Lauren-hinrichsen]

I really wanted to see a picture of the "naked singularity" and had it typed into google before I realized that's probably not gonna give me the exact results I want

[joemomma]

“Black holes are some of the simplest objects in the universe”




I really really hate editing comments but it seems a good amount of you don't realize I was quoting him in the literal same video and have tried disagreeing

[arifsyah]

God really does know how to make extreme beyblades

[Viper-MotoVlogger]

Black holes are both amazing and scary at the same time.

[scottmanley]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but isn't ISCO the wrong thing to focus on here regarding on the limit of the rotation, the ISCO is for matter orbiting the black hole. Photons departing radially outwards can escape for any point exterior to the event horizon regardless of the rotation. For a black hole with a rotational parameter of more than 0.28 photons can orbit prograde in the plane of rotation right down to the event horizon.

Isn't the problem with rotation parameter > 1 the fact that the kerr metric would create a ring shaped singularity that had a radius larger than the Event horizon, and therefor expose a 'naked singularity'

[Trackandshield]

So that star was blinking every 131 seconds means that it was revolving around black hole every 130 seconds??😮😮

[alberteinstein]

The real question is
Does the universe spin

[micaiahweaver]

Derek should do a co-lab with Kurzgesagt on black holes.

[becca]

Your channel is one of the biggest reasons I’ve decided to finally go back to school, and for certain. No more maybe in a year or maybe next years, I’m going this fall for certain :) . I’m planning on getting a bio-engineering degree, but if I can have it my way instead of time’s way, I hope to get many different scientific degrees, as theres no single subject I can just dedicate my only KNOWABLE life to. Thank you for all the videos you’ve released, and for reminding me of why I fell in love with science as a kid. It’s like I found my passion after all these years, after school and general life circumstances seemed to just be determined to beat it out of me 😭 I will come back to this channel one day!! When things are different, but for the better.

[EventHorizon]

Not only a new veritasium video, but a new one about BLACK HOLES? is it my birthday?

[pro_wie]

*So this happened 290 million years ago ?*