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“It turns out that there are only three things you can measure about the properties of a black hole: its mass, spin, and charge,” says Sivakoff. “I’m really interested in IXPE’s ability to give us a new way to measure spin, and possibly even check for any changes in that spin over a long enough period of time.”
Black holes make up about 40% of the dark matter in the universe, but astronomers have only been able to do this recently. photo one. The data that IXPE will bring back, black holes once actively fed they neighbors and makes it easier for scientists to study the particles that exist around these powerful objects. With X-ray polarization, it is also possible to map a black hole’s inner edge by measuring its angular momentum or spin.
IXPE’s mission could give us some insight into how galaxies evolved, Sivakoff adds, as supermassive black holes and neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars that lived fast and died young.
Herman MarshallMeasuring polarization is “like putting a mirror in the unseen part of the galaxy,” says research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Studies and a co-author of IXPE. We hope that when IXPE turns its eyes to the stars, it won’t mind parting with a few more secrets of the galaxy.
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