Pasta-Shaped Light From Spinning Black Holes Could Test Relativity

[n2doc]

By Lisa Grossman February 14, 2011

Rotating black holes could leave a twisty signature on light escaping their gravitational maws. If this screwy light can be detected from Earth, it would give astronomers a new way to detect exotic black holes and a new test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, says a team of physicists.

“For relativity, it’s very important,” said physicist Martin Bojowald at Penn State University, who was not involved in the new work. “There are very few classic tests of relativity. It now seems that we are pretty close to actually using this.”

Black holes are greedy beasts. Not only do they attract matter so strongly that even light can get trapped in their great gravitational bellies, they also grab hold of the fabric of space-time in their vicinity. When a black hole spins — and astronomers expect that most do, although none have been definitively observed — it swirls its surrounding space-time around with it like water spiraling around a drain.

This phenomenon, called frame-dragging, has been proven to work even around bodies as small as Earth. Observations of two Earth-orbiting satellites over the last few decades show that the satellites drag by several feet per year as Earth’s spin tows the fabric of space and time in circles.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/spinning-black-holes/

Ramen, my brothers and sisters in Giant Spaghetti Monsterism, Ramen!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Zowie.

a real spaghetti monster.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Just the notion of space-time being "dragged around" something is mind-boggling.

What we think of as our stable little dot of personal space in the Cosmos, ain't.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. HA!

One "example" about our so called stable little dot:

Michelle Bachmann.