An artist’s impression of an accretion disk rotating around an unseen supermassive black hole. (IMAGE)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau

An artist’s impression of an accretion disk rotating around an unseen supermassive black hole.

Caption

An artist’s impression of an accretion disk rotating around an unseen supermassive black hole. The accretion process produces random fluctuations in luminosity from the disk over time, a pattern found to be related to the mass of the black hole in a new study led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers.

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Graphic courtesy Mark A. Garlick/Simons Foundation

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