Astronomers from the United States found out that it is possible to determine the mass of black hole in its relationship with the light emitted. The article of scientists with a description of the method is published in the SCIENCE journal.
supermassive black holes have weight from one hundred and millions of sunny. They are usually located in Galaktik centers and practically do not emit light – it is possible to detect them only by gravitational effects – except for cases of accretion, nutrition of interstellar gas and matter from nearby stars. In such cases, black holes emit light in visible and ultraviolet bands at a certain interval – from several hours to several decades.
Astrophysics from Illinois University in Urbane-Champane made a database of 67 actively accreting supermassive black holes and found that the black holes are closely correlated with their mass: it is proportional to the frequency of oscillation damping. Such a relationship was revealed for white dwarfs – much less massive stars residue.
According to astronomers, the emission of light is associated with random fluctuations during the accretion process. The researchers hope that with the help of the correlation, it is also possible to identify the emitting patterns from the black holes of the middle mass – the class of objects, to detect which is still hard.