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Why Some Black Holes Look Different From Others

Despite having a standard model of an AGN — a supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disk with jets streaming out in opposite directions, all encompassed by a dusty torus — making sense of our observations is still a challenge.

The Crux
By Summer Ash
Jul 16, 2018 10:17 PMApr 18, 2020 7:44 PM
Black Hole - NASA
(Credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al.; MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al.; ESO/WFI)

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Astronomers can sometimes be literal to a fault. We like to call things as we see them. For example, if it’s red and it’s huge: “Red Giant.” White and small: “White Dwarf.” Massive explosion: “Big Bang.” Dark and sucks everything in: “Black Hole.”

Most of the time, classifying objects this way works fine — either it’s new, or it’s something we already know of. But sometimes, as with Pluto, we make new observations that force us to question the name, reassess the object, and identify it differently. You might think this never happens with something as clearly defined as a black hole, but you’d be wrong.

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