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Research conducted by NASA's Fermi Space Telescope has confirmed a two-year cycle in the gamma brightness of an "active" galaxy, after ten years of observations, explained today. 39th Scientific Team at the Baltimore Press Conference (Maryland, USA)
"It's the first time that a gamma ray period is confirmed in an active galaxy," said Stefano Ciprini, a researcher at the Italian Space Agency and a member of the Fermi Telescope Group.
Ciprini and his colleagues presented these results at the 8th meeting of the Fermi International Symposium, held this week in Baltimore, about 56 kilometers northeast of Washington.
This discovery offers new information about physical processes near a giant black hole, which weighs millions of times the mass of the Sun, according to NASA.
In about 1% of the largest known galaxies, the giant black hole emits billions of times more energy than the Sun, an emission that can vary unpredictably, explains Informe21.
Astronomers refer to these as "active" galaxies, such as that analyzed by Fermi, known as PG 1553 + 113.
"We observed for the first time a periodic sign of modulation in 2014 when we conducted detailed analyzes of Fermi data, and we can now say with certainty that this long-term behavior is real," said Sara Cutini, researcher at the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics. in Perugia.
According to experts, the most "tempting" interpretation of this cyclical issue is that there are two giant black holes in the heart of the galaxy.
In this scenario, "one of the black holes would emit gamma rays in one jet and the direction of that jet would shift due to interactions with the other giant black hole," Ciprini said.
This would make the PG 1553 + 113 a prime target for a future space-based gravitational wave detector, such as the Agency's Space Interferometer Laser (LISA) antenna. European Space, which is due to be launched in the 2030s.
However, the researchers warned that other interpretations could explain this cyclic emission in the PG 1553 + 113 active galaxy.
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