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Scientists have discovered an unusual and mysterious “heartbeat” from a cloud of cosmic gas.
The cloud – which is otherwise unremarkable – appears to “beat” with the rhythm of a nearby black hole, the researchers say.
As such, they appear to be related to each other, the researchers write in a new journal. But it’s unclear how the cloud’s gamma ray “heartbeat” may be connected to the black hole, which is 100 light years away.
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The research team found the heartbeat after browsing ten years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. They were looking at a system known as S 433, about 15,000 light years from us, which includes a giant star that is about 30 times the mass of our sun as well as a huge black hole.
Every 13 days, the black hole and the star revolve around each other. As they do so, the black hole sucks material from the giant star.
“This material accumulates in an accretion disk before falling into the black hole, like water in the vortex above a bathtub drain,” said Jian Li, one of the researchers at the paper. “However, some of this material does not fall down the drain but spurts out at high speed in two narrow jets in opposite directions above and below the rotating accretion disk.”
This accretion disk is not exactly aligned with the orbit of the two objects. Instead, it wobbles over time like a spinning top that’s not flat, and so the two jets spiral through space rather than shoot in straight lines.
These jets oscillate over a period of approximately 162 days. And that same rhythm is seen in the gamma ray signal in the cloud, relatively far from these jets, which otherwise wouldn’t be noticeable – but appear to send an emission fueled by the jets.
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Mystic Mountain, a three light-years-tall pillar of gas and dust overflowing with jets of nascent star gas buried inside, was captured by Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010
Nasa / ESA / STScI
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The very first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover at the start of its Mars exploration mission in 2012
Nasa / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
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Death of a star: This image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows Tycho’s supernova, a star in our Milky Way galaxy
Nasa
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Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, pictured here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on NASA’s New Horizons space raft at a distance of 4.1 billion kilometers from Earth
Getty
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An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust
Nasa
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The very first image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving NASA, and released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light years from Earth
Getty
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Pluto, as shown by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
Nasa / APL / SwRI
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A coronal mass ejection seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
Nasa
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Dark and narrow streaks 100 meters long descending on the surface of Mars are believed to be evidence of contemporary water flow. It has since been suggested that they might instead be formed by flowing sand
Nasa / JPL / University of Arizona
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Morning Aurora: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of green aurora lights from the International Space Station in October 2015
Nasa / Scott Kelly
1/10
Mystic Mountain, a three light-years-tall pillar of gas and dust overflowing with jets of nascent star gas buried inside, was captured by Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010
Nasa / ESA / STScI
2/10
The very first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover at the start of its Mars exploration mission in 2012
Nasa / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
3/10
Death of a star: This image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows Tycho’s supernova, a star in our Milky Way galaxy
Nasa
4/10
Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, pictured here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on NASA’s New Horizons space raft at a distance of 4.1 billion kilometers from Earth
Getty
5/10
An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust
Nasa
6/10
The very first image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving NASA, and released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light years from Earth
Getty
7/10
Pluto, as shown by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
Nasa / APL / SwRI
8/10
A coronal mass ejection seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
Nasa
9/10
Dark and narrow streaks 100 meters long descending on the surface of Mars are believed to be evidence of contemporary water flow. It has since been suggested that they might instead be formed by flowing sand
Nasa / JPL / University of Arizona
10/10
Morning Aurora: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of green aurora lights from the International Space Station in October 2015
Nasa / Scott Kelly
“Finding such an unambiguous connection by synchronization, about 100 light years from the micro quasar, not even in the direction of the jets, is as unexpected as it is amazing,” Li says. “But how the black hole can fuel the heartbeat. of the gas cloud is not clear to us. “
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