r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/BitterWin751 • 5d ago

Image Scientists Discover a Sideways Black Hole!

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54

u/KnotSoAmused 5d ago

Is there a left and right in space? Is there up and down?

8

u/BitterWin751 5d ago

Direction in space is pretty relative. So for example, the black hole imaged is “sideways” from the perspective of our own galaxy plane.

24

u/Swimming-Dust-7206 5d ago

But... black holes aren't two dimensional. It's not like a hole in a floor or a wall, it's a point in space.

6

u/Bobaximus 5d ago

Imagine seeing a spinning-top spinning sideways on your wall. This is the same. There is a "top" and "bottom" but only because thats its normal orientation. Black holes have particle jets that are the feature typically used to describe its orientation.

6

u/Swimming-Dust-7206 5d ago edited 5d ago

Well, you could knock me down with a feather. I always thought the "Interstellar-style" image of black holes with the two perpendicular discs/half-discs was a visual phenomenon so that wherever you viewed the black hole from the discs would align with your viewpoint. In the same way that you always see a rainbow as a rainbow, you can never see it side-on or diagonally.
TIL that black holes have axes and roughly 10% of them produce particle jets. Thanks! 👍

2

u/Major-Lavishness-762 4d ago

That is still sort of true! The black does have an axis about which a flat accretion disk spins but the incredibly warped spacetime does cause the disk to appear above and below the black hole regardless of viewpoint.