WWW.FRONTPAGEDETECTIVES.COM / LATEST NEWS

Scientists Stunned As 'Sleeping' Black Hole Wakes Up And Starts Shooting The Most Powerful X-Ray Blasts Ever

A black hole in a distant galaxy has kept astronomers hooked to its quasiperiodic eruption activity, which is not a regular phenomenon.

BY SOMDATTA MAITY

PUBLISHED 3 DAYS AGO

This artist’s concept portrays the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (A-star). (Representative Cover Image Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))

Black holes have always been an intriguing object for astronomers to observe in space. Despite being on the radar of experts for decades, there are still many things about this phenomenon that remain a mystery. Recently, researchers announced a new development after analyzing one such black hole, stated Science Daily. Findings regarding this development have been published in Nature Astronomy.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of our Milky Way black hole released in 2022, has captured a new view of the massive object at the centre of our Galaxy: how it looks in polarised light. (Representative Image Source: Wikimedia Commons/Photo by EHT Collaboration) — The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration captured a new view of the massive object at the center of our Galaxy. (Representative Image Source: Wikimedia Commons | Photo by EHT Collab.)

Astronomers have gotten an opportunity to observe the real-time behavior of an awakened Black hole. The study is focused on the activity of a black hole at the heart of SDSS1335+0728, a distant galaxy 300 million light-years away from Earth. Researchers claim that this particular black hole is exhibiting a quasiperiodic eruption.

In 2019, astronomers spotted flashes of light coming from the galaxy. After analyzing SDSS1335+0728 for years, the team concluded that the flashes were a result of a black hole inside the galaxy entering an active phase. Researchers observed all the activity in 'Ansky,' the central region of this galaxy, which is behaving like an active galactic nucleus. "When we first saw Ansky light up in optical images, we triggered follow-up observations using NASA's Swift X-ray space telescope, and we checked archived data from the eROSITA X-ray telescope, but at the time we didn't see any evidence of X-ray emissions," said Paula Sánchez Sáez, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory, Germany, and leader of the team that is conducting the examinations.

In February 2024, the team recorded the eruption of X-ray bursts from the Ansky. The team further claimed that it was not a one-time thing and happened at regular intervals. These X-ray flashes have been seen before in space and are called quasiperiodic eruptions, but before this, they have never been linked with an active black hole. "This rare event provides an opportunity for astronomers to observe a black hole's behaviour in real time, using X-ray space telescopes XMM-Newton and NASA's NICER, Chandra, and Swift. This phenomenon is known as a quasiperiodic eruption, or QPE. QPEs are short-lived flaring events. And this is the first time we have observed such an event in a black hole that seems to be waking up," explained Lorena Hernández-García, a researcher at Valparaiso University, Chile.

The presence of QPE in the supposed black hole and Ansky surprised researchers. The common belief is that QPEs are formed when objects like a star or black hole interact with an accretion disc. The accretion disc is formed when a black hole captures matter and turns it into a hot disc. The surprising thing is that, as per the team's monitoring, Ansky has not captured any matter in recent times. This observation, therefore, challenges all of the previous assertions regarding this phenomenon.

XMM-Newton, an X-ray telescope, was used by the team to figure out the amount of energy that was being released from Ansky. The telescope monitored the fainter X-ray background light that occurred between the bursts. Based on how dim the Ansky got, researchers were able to calculate the amount of energy that was being released from the region.

Their calculations showcased that these X-rays stand apart from other QPEs observed to date in space. "The bursts of X-rays from Ansky are ten times longer and ten times more luminous than what we see from a typical QPE," said Joheen Chakraborty, a team member and PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. "Each of these eruptions is releasing a hundred times more energy than we have seen elsewhere. Ansky's eruptions also show the longest cadence ever observed, of about 4.5 days. This pushes our models to their limits and challenges our existing ideas about how these X-ray flashes are being generated."

Researchers are hopeful that observing Ansky will allow experts to understand more about black hole evolution. "It's crucial to have these X-ray observations that will complement the gravitational wave data and help us solve the puzzling behaviour of massive black holes," said ESA Research Fellow and X-ray astronomer, Erwan Quintin.