A 2-Million-Solar-Mass Black Hole Just Gave Up Its Deepest Secret
Indian Defence Review••science
Key Points:
- The XRISM mission, launched in September 2023, used its high-resolution "Resolve" instrument alongside ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR to isolate warped X-ray signatures of iron near a supermassive black hole’s event horizon in galaxy MCG–6-30-15, confirming relativistic effects predicted by Einstein’s theory.
- XRISM’s unprecedented spectral resolution allowed scientists to distinguish between X-ray emissions from the inner accretion disk and those from more distant gas clouds, resolving a longstanding debate about the origin of warped iron emissions in the galaxy.
- The study identified five distinct zones of outflowing winds around the black hole, including highly ionized gas moving at speeds up to 20,000 km/s
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