Astronomers attend "one of the most extraordinary black hole systems"

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The black hole, known as V404 Cygni, does not behave like the others. The jets are projected a few minutes apart and in all directions. And while researchers admit that black holes are among the most extreme objects in the universe, this one is different.

"It's one of the most extraordinary black hole systems I've ever encountered," said study author James Miller-Jones, in a statement. communicated. Miller-Jones is also Associate Professor at the International Center for Radioastronomy Research at Curtin University.
The study published Monday in the journal Nature.

"Like many black holes, it feeds on a nearby star, moves the gas away from the star and forms a disc of matter that surrounds the black hole and that winds up under it. effect of gravity, "he said. "What's different in V404 Cygni is that we think that the material disk and the black hole are misaligned, which seems to make the inner part of the disk oscillate like a top and throw jets in different directions as the orientation changes. "

The black hole was discovered in 1989 due to the emission of jets and radiation. Previous explosions associated with this black hole were noted in 1938 and 1956 and were found on photographic plates of archives.

The V404 Cygni attracted the attention of astronomers around the world when it unleashed another dazzling explosion that lasted two weeks in 2015. The telescopes were trained all over the world, generating a observation data.

Normally, jets spout from the poles of the black holes. These jets took off in different directions, at different speeds, in a few hours.

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The black hole itself is rotating and the gravitational force is so strong that it attracts the space and time that surround it. This is what is called dragging the image.

The material in the jets is blown by the accretion disk in rotation of the black hole. The disc is formed when the material of a nearby star is drawn in a circle around the black hole.

On the scale, the black hole is nine times more massive than our sun and the V404 Cygni disk is 10 million kilometers in diameter. The jets project materials at 60% of the speed of light.

Because the axis of rotation of the black hole is misaligned, the sliding of the frame also deforms part of the disc, causing an intense oscillation responsible for takeoff of the jets in different directions.

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"This is the only mechanism we can think of that can explain the rapid precession seen in the Cygni V404," Miller-Jones said. "You can think of this as a flicker of a spinning top that is slowing down, but in this case the flicker is caused by Einstein's theory of general relativity."

The researchers had to use a different technique to capture what was going on in the black hole. Normally, they use long exposures.

"These jets were changing so fast that in a four-hour picture we only saw a blur," said Alex Tetarenko, another of the study's authors and researcher at the Observatory's East Asia.

Instead, 70-second solo shows were combined to create a movie of action that was attended by astronomers.

"We were amazed by what we saw in this system – it was completely unexpected," said Greg Sivakoff in a statement, author and associate professor in the university's Department of Physics. ; Alberta. "The discovery of this astronomical first has deepened our understanding of how black holes and galaxy formation can work, and it tells us a bit more about this big question:" How did we get here? "

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