Astronomers discover a hungry black hole that requires three meals a day

We all know that we should have three meals a day. And now, astronomers have discovered a black hole that seems to share this preference: it consumes materials on a regular schedule every nine hours.

Using data from the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory and the XMM-Newton Observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA), researchers discovered the black hole of a galaxy called GSN 069 and have seen it emit X-ray bursts that are repeated regularly. model. The X-ray bursts indicate that the black hole consumes the dust and gas from nearby stars, but it is very unusual to see this happening on such a regular schedule. About three times a day, the black hole devours a quantity of material equivalent to four of our moon.

"This black hole is planned as never before," said Giovanni Miniutti of the ESA's Center for Astrobiology in Spain, lead author of the article, in a statement. "This behavior is so unprecedented that we had to invent a new expression to describe it:" quasi-periodic x-ray eruptions. "

During periods of consumption, the amount of x-rays emitted by the black hole is multiplied by 20, and the temperature of the gas falling into the black hole also goes from about 1 million degrees Fahrenheit to about 2.5 million. degrees Fahrenheit. It was these explosions that allowed astronomers to observe the regular feeding of the black hole.

"By combining the data from these two X-ray observatories, we followed these periodic explosions for at least 54 days," said co-author Richard Saxton of the European Space Center for Space Astronomy in the same statement. "This gives us a unique opportunity to witness the flow of material in a supermassive black hole that accelerates and slows down repeatedly."

Researchers do not yet know exactly what causes the motive. It could be that energy accumulates in the disc of material around the black hole until it reaches a point of instability and falls into the black hole. This pattern of accumulation and consumption could explain the regular schedule. Or it may be that another body orbiting the black hole, such as a star remainder, interacts with the disc of matter and the way it is consumed by the black hole.

The results are published in the journal Nature.

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