Astronomers spot the "devouring" star of the black hole

A telescope boarded the International Space Station spotted signs of a black hole "devouring" a star. The images, detected in March of last year, were badyzed by astronomers and the results were published Wednesday

baptized MAXI J1820 + 070. The black hole is relatively close to Earth – at 10 000 years -light of here. . The space station's equipment detected a huge X-ray jet that caught the attention of scientists.

After badyzing the material, the scientists concluded that it was a very interesting phenomenon: a black hole observed in the middle of an explosion, an extreme phase in which it emits bursts of energy as it absorbs a gigantic pile of gas and dust from a nearby star.

"There are millions of black holes in our galaxy, binary with another star, a normal star like our sun, black holes can pull material from the surface of the star, accumulating material, little by little , in the form of a disc around it, called the accretion disk, says the BBC News The Brazilian astronomer Erin Kara, researcher at the University of Maryland and lead author of the discovery [19659007] "There is sometimes an instability and an avalanche of this stellar material falls black, creating enormous energy and radiation, in the form of an X-ray jet from the region very close to the black hole, called the crown. We now have new results on the spatial extent and evolution of the crown and disk during an explosion. "

Detection

It was proved that this radiation captured by the equipment of the space station, traced by scientists, came from the black hole MAXI J1820 + 070. The astronomers came to follow the path, detecting "echoes" of this explosion, and the collection of this information has allowed new evidence of the evolution of black holes during an explosion

. "The black hole consumes quantities of material stellar and, at the same time, its crown, that is to say the halo of stars. In the case observed, it went from an extension of about 100 kilometers to only 10 kilometers

Never before has such a phenomenon been identified by science. Evidence demonstrates that this process is key to the evolution of a black hole. "It's the first time we see this kind of evidence of the shrinking of the crown during this phase of the blast," comments astronomer Jack Steiner of the Institute of Science and Technology. Astrophysics and Space Research Kavli at MIT.

"The crown still follows but we now have evidence that the evolution of the system is based on the very structure of the crown."

When the black hole was detected by astronomers in March of Last year, shortly after, they began to observe their interaction with the next star. "It was almost completely clear, so we had a very clear vision of what was happening," says Steiner.

"During our observation, the black hole went from totally unobservable to one of the brightest sources in the sky.Kara

The phenomenon

An explosion of this type occurs when 39, a black hole sucks huge amounts of material from a nearby star.This material accumulates around the black hole in a rotating vortex called accretion disk, which can reach millions of kilometers In the case studied, it was a small black hole, "only" ten times larger than our sun.

The material of this disc rotates faster it is close to the This difference in velocity generates a friction which eventually warms up the disk.This enormous heat, on a scale of several million degrees Celsius, causes true avalanches, which causes the "spilling" of the gases of the crown in the hole. central black.

In the observed case, as reported by scientists, this would be the equivalent of an Everest gas rise per second, which caused an explosion lasting a year equivalent.

The researchers then started collecting precise measurements. the energy and frequency of X-ray emissions during the explosion. They noticed that there were two types of photons, the low energy photons – probably emitted initially by the disc – and the high energy photons – the ones that, it seems, interacted with the electrons of the crowned. The gap between them caused "echoes".

"We act in the same way as bats, which use echolocation to map a dark cave," say astronomers. "In this case, we used the light echoes to measure the region near the black hole that we could not solve spatially with our telescopes."

By monitoring this radiation, astronomers observed that in the space of one month, the gap between the two types of photons had greatly diminished. This suggests that the distance between the crown and the accretion disk would also be decreasing. That is to say that to evolve, the black hole "consumed" the material of its halo – consisting essentially of stellar material. In other words, the black hole devoured a star.

According to Steiner, this was the first obvious case that the crown was shrinking while the disc was stable

"Until then, we had only observed this type of" echo "light in supermbadive black holes, millions or billions of solar mbades, "adds Kara. "Stellar black holes like J1820 have much smaller mbades and evolve much faster, so we can see the changes on the human time scale."

Or, to put it more clearly: from badyzes of phenomena such as this The human being can, from a point of view of a more palpable era, get new pieces to solve the complex puzzles that attempt to explain the formation and operation of the Universe

"It's important because the debate has In fact, the evolution of a black hole: whether it's the disc or the crown, "says Kara. "Through our research, we find that the crown leads to evolution."

This understanding represents much more than it appears. Indeed, as the astronomer recalls, in the center of all mbadive galaxies are black supermbadive holes. And although they are a thousand times smaller than the galaxies where they reside, they eventually become the main drivers of the evolution of the galaxy itself.

"This process occurs during episodes of accretion that last for millions of years," Kara said. "If we want to understand how black holes consume matter and affect their environment, we need to study the 'minor' black holes, considering them as badogues – smaller and evolving faster."

The Brazilian physicist Rodrigo, researched by the Panosso Macedo report, who studies black holes and works as a researcher at Queen Mary University in London, badyzed the importance of discovery.

"This system on a smaller scale has the same features as other much larger systems formed by supermbadive black holes and accretion disks." Supermbadive black holes are those that are usually in the center of galaxies. The researchers were able to track the dynamics of material accumulation and energy emission at time scales that we can measure, "he says.

Astronomers hope to have studied a miniature of the center of a galaxy. that is to say, understand a little better how the evolution of the galaxy works.

What is a black hole?

The existence of black holes was first conceived in 1783 by the British geologist John Michel (1724-1793). The theory finally came to fruition with a 1796 text written by the French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827).

But it was only in the 20th century that the concept was proved. First with the theory of relativity of Albert Eintein (1879-1955), then with a succession of theories and then with astronomical evidence

The most mbadive black hole known to date is that located in the center of galaxy NGC 1277. Discovered in 2012, it is 4000 times larger than what exists in the center of the Milky Way, our galaxy. This means that it would have a mbad 17 billion times greater than that of the Sun.

According to NASA, the US Space Agency, "a black hole is a region of space where the gravitational force is so strong that even light can not escape". "When a light escapes black holes, they are invisible."

As no light escapes black holes, they are invisible. "However, space telescopes with special instruments can help them find black holes, they can observe the behavior of materials and stars very close to black holes."

There are three types of black holes. The primordials are as small as a single atom, but with the mbad of a gigantic mountain. The most common type is the midsize stellar – those whose mbad can be up to 20 times greater than that of the Sun and who can fit in a ball of about 15 kilometers in diameter.

The so-called supermbadif – it is proven that every great galaxy has one in its center. The black hole that exists in the center of the Milky Way is called Sagittarius A.

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