Our current understanding of the curved space-time around supermassive black holes is based on actively accreting black holes, which make up only ten per cent or less of the overall population. X-ray observations of that small fraction reveal strong gravitational redshifts that indicate that many of these black holes are rapidly rotating; however, selection biases suggest that these results are not necessarily reflective of...
Tag Archives: flow
Relativistic reverberation in the accretion flow of a tidal disruption event
Our current understanding of the curved space-time around supermassive black holes is based on actively accreting black holes, which make up only ten per cent or less of the overall population. X-ray observations of that small fraction reveal strong gravitational redshifts that indicate that many of these black holes are rapidly rotating; however, selection biases suggest that these results are not necessarily reflective of...
Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals
It has been shown that Neanderthals contributed genetically to modern humans outside Africa 47,000–65,000 years ago. Here we analyse the genomes of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan from the Altai Mountains in Siberia together with the sequences of chromosome 21 of two Neanderthals from Spain and Croatia. We find that a population that diverged early from other modern humans in Africa contributed genetically to...