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This clip opens with artist's animation of a zoom in to a black hole.
The black hole is surrounded
by an outermost thin disk of gas, and a thick torus closer to
the black hole. We also see jets eminating apparently
from the center, perpendicular to the disk.
As we zoom in more, we see the torus rotating. Our view
then peers over the torus and we see the central black hole.
There is a thin disk of gas between the inner edge of the torus
and the black hole. There is a gap between the innermost edge of
this disk and the black hole itself. We also see a jet of
material from the black hole. The jet consists of both a faint
funnel and a innermost dense stream.
The video clip ends with the torus and inner disk splitting to
show us a cutaway view.
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KIM WEAVER: Black holes have extreme gravity and they have a lot of intensity and heat and energy around them, and so the regions around a black hole are going to be producing X-rays as opposed to optical light, so if you are going to probe a black hole, you need to be able to see X-rays.
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We see an optical image of Centaurus A, which shows a galaxy having a bright
nucleus and dark band across the middle. We then see two successive
images of the core of the galaxy, which show more detail of the gas
(which is bright) and the dust (which is dark).
We then see an X-ray image of this region, which shows a bright
diagonal line eminating from the center of the galaxy.
We finally see an artist's concept of a black hole, which shows a
beam eminating from the center (like the diagonal line in the X-ray
image), and a bright oblong disk around the black hole.
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KIM WEAVER: A galaxy is filled with all sorts of stars and gas
and dust. And that gas and dust blocks our view to the center of the
galaxy. So if we look at it in optical light, we can't see the center
of the galaxy, because there's all the dust in the way. But in an
active galactic nucleus that has a huge black hole in the center that
gives off X-rays around it - around it in an accretion disk - you can use those X-rays to probe into the center of the galaxy. So you can see through the gas and dust.
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