Every one knew how laborious the usual Method is of attaining to Arts and Sciences; whereas by his Contrivance, the most ignorant Person at a reasonable Charge, and with a little bodily Labour, may write Books in Philosophy, Poetry, Politicks, Law, Mathematicks and Theology, without the least Assistance from Genius or Study.

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Laputan Logic*
Fanciful. Preposterous. Absurd.
Spinning Black Holes

Posted on Wednesday 5 November 2003

Click to enlarge
It's been known for a while that many galaxies have super-massive black holes at their centres (including our own). Recently it has been shown that at least some of these also rotate extremely rapidly and rapidly spinning massive bodies are thought to twist the fabric space-time. This is something that a new $700 million space probe is about to be sent up to test for. Most (but by no means all) galaxies have other strange dynamical aspects as well, I can't help wondering whether some of these could also be explained by the effects frame dragging by super-massive bodies.