Astronomers have observed a rare phenomenon in which a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole literally “drags” the fabric of space and time with it. The observations show how the material of a star orbiting the black hole oscillates. This is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
When a star passes too close to a black hole, its enormous gravitational forces can collapse it, turning it into an elongated “stellar spaghetti.” This material forms an accretion disk, some of which is sucked into the black hole, and the rest is ejected at nearly the speed of light in the form of powerful jets.
Data from NASA’s Swift Space Telescope and the Very Large Array radio telescope on Earth have shown that the disk and jets “oscillate” together, in a rhythm that repeats itself about every 20 days. Scientists believe this is direct evidence of the stretching of spacetime due to a black hole’s rotation.
