A blazar is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a relativistic jet (a jet composed of ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light) directed towards an observer.

Blazars are powerful sources of emission across the electromagnetic spectrum and are observed to be sources of high-energy gamma ray photons.

Blazars are highly variable sources, often undergoing rapid and dramatic fluctuations in brightness on short timescales (hours to days).

In 2009, a team of astronomers using the Swift spacecraft used the luminosity of S5 0014+81 to measure the mass of its super-massive black hole. They found it to be about 10,000 times more massive than the black hole at the center of our galaxy, or equivalent to 40 billion solar masses

  • @kameecodingEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    Stargate led me to believe the strong gravitational forces of the blackhole would affect how fast time passes, meaning the closer you get to a blackhole the less time it elapses for you compared to people observing from afar not affected by the gravitational forces.

    • Pons_Aelius
      -1•1 year ago

      Stargate, while a good series, is not the place to go for accurate information on astrophysics.

      Intense gravity does not cause time dilation. This only happens when a mass is accelerated to a relativistic velocity.

      This is the equation to calculate time dilation:

      Time dilation factor = the square root of (1 - (v2/C2))

      v = velocity of the mass.

      C = speed of light.

      The only thing that affects time dilation is the velocity of the mass compared to the speed of light.

      The gravity affecting the mass is irrelevant.

      It sounds like the stargate writers were told “Orbiting close to a black hole can cause time dilation” but what they heard was “being close to a black hole causes time dilation, black holes have high gravity…therefore being in a strong gravity field causes time dilation”