The black hole still gives many headaches to scientists who are struggling to detect as many objects of this kind in the universe as possible, but also to find out more details about them. Even if a black hole is very difficult to detect, scientists have managed for the first time to find a method to more accurately calculate the mass of those they can observe, everything having to do with the way these objects devour others near them .
The black hole devours almost everything that gets too close to it, i.e. stars, planets, or any other large or small objects, scientists have observed this repeatedly. Now scientists say that the way the accretion disk that a black hole has is formed, but also the way it emits radiation, can suggest the mass that such an object has, and here we are talking about an impressive premiere of scientists.
Black Hole: The INCREDIBLE Discovery that Surprised the World
The black hole generates in the accretion disk what scientists call "flashes", and they look very carefully at these because the large number of swallowed objects generates even more events of this kind. Scientists look at the time required for the illumination and "extinction" of the accretion disk that a black hole has, and based on this indicator they calculate what kind of mass an object of this kind has in the universe.
"Accretion disks around supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei produce continuous radiation at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths. Physical processes in the accretion flow lead to stochastic variability of this emission over a wide range of time scales. We measured the observed optical continuum variability in 67 active galactic nuclei and the characteristic time scale at which the variability power spectrum flattens. We found a correlation between this time scale and black hole mass that extends over the entire mass range of supermassive black holes."
Until now, the mass of the black hole has been calculated by much more complex methods, which require much more data, or with the help of a telescope that managed to make a single measurement in decades of operation. The new method thought by scientists to measure the mass of a black hole should help to establish this indicator more accurately for many objects of this kind throughout the universe.
The black hole still remains the source of many mysteries that scientists still don't know how to explain, so we still have a lot to learn about them in the future.
