Black hole of a distant galaxy seen flare unexpectedly | Space

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On September 11, 2019, ESA stated that its X-ray space telescope, XMM-Newton, had detected unpublished periodic X-rays from a giant black hole in a distant galaxy. These scientists said in a statement that flares:

… could help explain some enigmatic behaviors of active black holes

Active black holes are those that still actively swallow material – stars, gas, dust – provided by their original galaxies. We tend to see active supermassive black holes – like the one observed in a galaxy known as GSN 069, located about 250 million light-years away – in distant galaxies, unlike the supermassive black hole quieter at the center of our own Milky Way (even though the central dark hole of the Milky Way seemed to engulf Something earlier this year). Astronomers said:

On December 24, 2018, it was found that the source suddenly increased its brightness by a factor of 100, then returned to its normal level in one hour and returned to light nine hours later.

Giovanni Miniutti, of the Centro de Astrobiología de Madrid, Spain, is the principal author of a new article published on September 11 in the peer-reviewed journal. Nature. He said:

It was completely unexpected. Giant black holes flash regularly like a candle, but the rapid and repeated changes observed in GSN 069 from December are something completely new.

After learning that this black hole was lighting up, other telescopes were turned in his direction. XMM-Newton made follow-up observations over the next two months, as did NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory. These telescopes confirmed:

… that the distant black hole always kept the tempo, emitting almost periodic bursts of X-rays every nine hours.

Researchers call this new phenomenon "quasi-periodic eruptions," or QPE.

You have probably heard that black holes are black because no light can escape them. So what does the flare do? The eruptions come from the process of accretion. It just happens before gas, dust, or stellar debris fall beyond the point of no return, called the horizon of events. Before this ultimate dive on the event horizon, the material forms a flattened ring of rotating material, called accretion disk. Miniutti explained that X-ray rockets:

… come from materials that accumulate in the black hole and heat up in the process.

Several mechanisms of the accretion disk could give rise to this type of quasi-periodic signal, potentially linked to instabilities in the accretion flux near the central black hole.

Alternatively, the eruptions could be due to the interaction of the disc material with a second body – another black hole or perhaps the remainder of a star previously disturbed by the black hole.

Giovanni and his colleagues stated that – although no one has ever observed this phenomenon before – periodic outbreaks like the ones we just saw could be common in the universe. Their statement explained:

It is possible that the phenomenon was not identified before, because most of the black holes in the heart of distant galaxies, whose masses reach millions and billions of times the mass of our sun, are much larger than that of GSN 069, which is only 400,000 times more massive than our sun.

The larger and larger the black hole, the more brightness fluctuations that it can display are slow. Thus, a typical supermassive black hole will occur not every nine hours, but every few months or years. This would make detection unlikely, as observations rarely cover such long periods.

They stated that quasi-periodic eruptions such as those found in GSN 069 could provide a natural framework for interpreting some surprising patterns observed in a significant fraction of active black holes, whose luminosity seems too variable to be easily explained by the models. current theoretical. Miniutti said:

We know of many massive black holes whose luminosity increases or decreases very large factors in a matter of days or months, while we expect them to vary much more slowly.

But if some of this variability corresponds to the rise or fall of eruptions similar to those found in GSN 069, the rapid variability of these systems, which currently seems unrealizable, could naturally be taken into account.

New data and other studies will indicate whether this analogy is valid.

The near-periodic eruptions observed in the GSN 069 could also explain other intriguing properties observed in the X-ray emission of almost all the shiny and rising supermassive black holes, which can be read on ESA Space News.

For the moment, this team of astronomers is trying to organize its studies on the distant galaxy GSN 069; for example, they try to determine the properties that define this galaxy at the moment when the periodic eruptions were detected for the first time. Norbert Schartel, a scientist with ESA's XMM-Newton project, said:

GSN 069 is an extremely fascinating source, likely to become a reference in the field of black hole accretion.

Knowing what to look for, they added, will also help them use X-ray telescopes such as XMM-Newton and Chandra more efficiently to look for other quasi-periodic eruptions of others. supermassive black holes in other distant galaxies. Margherita Giustini from the Centro de Astrobiología de Madrid – co-author of the study – said the goal was:

… to better understand the physical origin of this new phenomenon.

Conclusion: By the end of 2018, the supermassive GSN 069 galaxy black hole, located about 250 million light-years away from the planet, suddenly increased its luminosity by a factor of 100, then came back at its normal level in one hour. then turn on again nine hours later. Since then, he has pursued these quasi-periodic flares. Scientists want to know what causes them.

Source: 9-hour quasi-periodic x-ray eruptions from a low mass black hole galactic core

Via ESA