7 Sept 2023
Go to https://brilliant.org/drbecky to get a 30-day free trial and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual subscription! This summer, I published two research papers with my collaborators about the growth of supermassive black holes. One of those research papers was about what processes cause SMBHs to spin at their maximum rates, and the subsequent effect on their galaxy’s. So in this video we’re going to dive into that research paper and I’ll explain what we found…

Beckmann, Smethurst et al. (2023; the spins of SMBHs) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.13614.pdf
Smethurst, Beckmann et al. (2023; coevolution of SMBHs and their galaxy’s) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.13677.pdf

My other research papers – https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/…

Reynolds (2021; observationally measuring spin review) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.08948.pdf
Fabian (2002; FeK⍺ line to measure spin) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/020609…
Martin et al. (2018; simulations show less than 35% of all mass in SMBHs due to mergers) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.09699.pdf
McAlpine et al. (2020; simulations show less than 15% of mass in SMBHs due to mergers) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.00959.pdf
Tadhunter et al. (2018; using HST to image the outflow from a SMBH) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.00514.pdf

00:00 – Introduction
01:17 – What do we mean by black hole “spin”?
04:19 – How fast can black holes spin?
06:47 – How you actually measure black hole spin
09:52 – Why the spin of a SMBH affects the whole galaxy
15:34 – My new research: galaxy merger-free growth of SMBHs leads to the highest spins in simulations
18:55 – Can we test these results with observations?
20:41 – Brilliant
21:47 – Bloopers

Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV

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📚 My new book, “A Brief History of Black Holes”, out NOW in hardback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky

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