Ramesh Narayan 2005 New J. Phys. 7 199 doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/199
Black holes in astrophysics
Focus on Spacetime 100 Years LaterRamesh Narayan
Show affiliationsPart of Focus on Spacetime 100 Years Later
This paper reviews the current status of black hole (BH) astrophysics, focusing on topics of interest to a physics audience. Astronomers have discovered dozens of compact objects with masses greater than 3M
, the likely maximum mass of a neutron star. These objects are identified as BH candidates. Some of the candidates have masses ~5M–20M and are found in x-ray binaries, while the rest have masses ~106M–109.5M and are found in galactic nuclei. A variety of methods are being tried to estimate the spin parameters of the candidate BHs. There is strong circumstantial evidence that many of the objects have event horizons, so there is good reason to believe that the candidates are true BHs. Recent MHD simulations of magnetized plasma accreting on rotating BHs seem to hint that relativistic jets may be produced by a magnetic analogue of the Penrose process.
- PACS
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98.62.Js Galactic nuclei (including black holes), circumnuclear matter, and bulges
- Subjects
- Dates
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Issue 1 (September 2005)
Received 7 September 2004
Published 29 September 2005
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Black holes in astrophysics
Ramesh Narayan 2005 New J. Phys. 7 199
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