One way or another, tiny black hole causes ‘heartbeat’ 100 light years away

There is a patch of cloudy space inside our galaxy that unexpectedly produces gamma radiation at clock-like intervals. Scientists have now linked these periodic pulses to a “microquasar” – possibly a black hole – located a hundred light years away, in what is an extraordinary sighting.

New research published today in Nature Astronomy describes an unusual long-range relationship involving a cloud of radioactive gas, called Fermi J1913 + 0515, and a microquasar, called SS 433, both of which reside inside the Milky Way galaxy .

Data collected over the past 10 years suggests that objects are inextricably connected and operate in sync, despite the enormous distance between them. The authors of the new paper, led by Jian Li of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Diego Torres of the Institute for Space Science, aren’t entirely sure what’s going on or how the microquasar causes the gamma heartbeat. of the gas cloud, which pulses once every 162 days.

Located 15,000 light years from Earth, the microquasar SS 433 is one of the most fascinating places in the galaxy. It is a binary system that consists of a compact object, probably a black hole but possibly a neutron star, and an overweight star. The alleged black hole weighs between 10 and 20 solar masses (where 1 solar mass is equal to the mass of our Sun), while the star has a mass of 30 solar masses. Glued together, the objects rotate around each other once every 13 days. SS 433 is a pint-sized version of a normal quasar, a type of cosmic object that encompasses much heavier black holes filled with millions of solar masses.

This celestial union generates a set of ephemera detectable in the form of gamma rays, X-rays, radio waves and hydrogen gas. The large star throws much of its material at the black hole, resulting in an intense build-up of gas.

“This material accumulates in an accretion disk before falling into the black hole, like water in the vortex above a bathtub drain,” Li said in a report. Press release. “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.”

These jets generate X-rays and gamma rays due to the combined forces of high-speed particles and ultra-strong magnetic fields residing in the binary system. That said, the accretion disk around the black hole does not lie perfectly flat along the orbital plane of the two objects.

“It precedes, or swings, like a top that has been set up tilted on a table,” Torres said in the DESY version. “As a result, the two jets spin in a spiral in the surrounding space, rather than just forming a straight line.”

This precession oscillates with a period of 162.25 days. And as new research shows, Fermi J1913 + 0515 emits a gamma signal in perfect sync with the microquasar, even though it is 100 light years away. Other than that, there is nothing particularly special about this cloudy area of ​​space, but the data, collected using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, suggests that the heartbeat of the rays gamma is powered by the microquasar SS 433.

Making things even more bizarre, the microquasar jets, even with precession, do not cross Fermi’s path J1913 + 0515, as Li explained in an email.

“This is the first time that we are seeing this observation result, and it is unexpected from previously published theoretical models,” he said.

Li and his colleagues aren’t entirely sure how the microquasar feeds the distant gas cloud, but they believe that the protons from the equatorial output of the SS 433 interact with the cloud, resulting in the emission of rays. gamma and the observed periodicity of the heart rate.

“To maintain the consistency of the heartbeat, a magnetic tube can connect the gas cloud and SS 433,” Li said in his email.

More observations of the objects and a new theoretical explanation to explain this unexpected discovery and the “magnetic tube” hypothesis would help advance this work. One thing is certain, however: this plot of space, located in the constellation Aquila (or the Eagle), is now one of the most fascinating spots in the Milky Way.