Previous authors have claimed that the black hole at the center of NGC 1365 is spinning extremely rapidly. But these claims are based on certain assumptions about the dominance of relativistic effects on the spectrum of NGC 1365. Risaliti et al., dig deeper into the spectral data of this X-ray source and use simulations to determine whether the signatures we see are caused by a rapidly-spinning black hole, or just cloudy (galactic) weather.
The authors discuss the possibility that the strangely-shaped supernova remnant W49B was created by a core-collapse supernova that formed strong bipolar jets instead of a spherical shockwave.
Observational surveys looking for the smallest super-massive black holes come up empty; could they be hiding in plain sight?
The race to be the first to detect gravitational waves is on – are pulsar timing arrays on the verge of a discovery? New predictions based on revised galaxy merger calculations suggest that it may be so.
In this article, the authors report their serendipitous discovery of two stellar mass-black holes in the globular cluster M22, however theoretical work predicts that there should only be one stellar-mass black hole!
Witzel et. al examine the statistical properties of the photometric variability of our Galaxy’s central black hole.