Sunday 30 August 2020

general relativity - What methods can astronomers use to find a black hole?


How can astronomers say, we know there are black holes at the centre of each galaxy?


What methods of indirect detection are there to know where and how big a black hole is?



Answer



There are three main feasible ways of detecting a black hole:




  • Gravitational lensing: the strong gravitational attraction of a black hole bends space time and the light coming from nearby stars (nearby in the sense of being in the same are in our sky) is bent inwards. There are a few well known distorsion types due to gravity, but mainly we can see galaxies, which are more or less elliptical, bent into pancake shapes.


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  • Accretion disks and jets: as the black hole "sucks in" dust and other similar matter from nearby space, the matter is accelerated at relativistic velocities and it emits x-rays as it goes to die inside the event horizon.


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  • Stars orbiting black holdes: if a star is orbiting a black hole, it will appear to be orbiting empty space (since we can't basically see a black hole directly).


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Other ways, like Hawking radiation, are only theoretically possible for now -we could maybe be able to see old mini black holes "popping" but it's not really clear how that would happen exactly and none has been seen so far.


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