{"id":14374,"date":"2025-04-12T18:02:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T18:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/14374\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T18:02:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T18:02:14","slug":"for-the-first-time-astronomers-watch-a-black-hole-wake-up-in-real-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/14374\/","title":{"rendered":"For the first time, astronomers watch a black hole \u2018wake up\u2019 in real-time"},"content":{"rendered":"

A black hole<\/a> is a terrifying concept, but the mysterious nexus of physics and space-time<\/a> isn\u2019t always gobbling up matter. While famous for devouring anything and everything in its gravitational pull, black holes aren\u2019t constantly destructive. In fact, they often exhibit long periods of dormancy. Astronomers had never witnessed a black hole \u201cwake up<\/a>\u201d in real time\u2014until now.<\/p>\n

Researchers have spent the past few years watching a black hole re-awaken roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. And what they\u2019ve documented challenges prevailing theories about black hole lifecycles. The groundbreaking observations are detailed in a study published on April 11 in Nature Astronomy.<\/a><\/p>\n

For decades, the supermassive black hole anchoring a galaxy known as SDSS1335+0728 in the Virgo constellation hasn\u2019t displayed much activity. But beginning in late 2019, astronomers noticed it began to emit intermittent, bright flashes of energy. They soon reclassified the galaxy\u2019s center as an active galactic nucleus nicknamed \u201cAnsky,\u201d and enlisted telescopes from NASA and the ESA to help study the unexpected event.<\/p>\n

\"Artist's<\/p>\n

An artist\u2019s impression of a stellar-mass black hole similar to the one inside Ansky. Credit: European Space Agency, NASA and Felix Mirabel (the French Atomic Energy Commission & the Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics\/Conicet of Argentina) European Space Agency, NASA and Felix Mirabel (the French Atomic Energy Commission & the Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics\/Conicet of Argentina)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first saw Ansky light up in optical images, we triggered follow-up observations using NASA\u2019s Swift X-ray space telescope, and we checked archived data from the eROSITA X-ray telescope, but at the time we didn\u2019t see any evidence of X-ray emissions,\u201d Paula S\u00e1nchez S\u00e1ez, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory in Germany and lead researcher of the first team to study Ansky, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to February 2024 when Lorena Hern\u00e1ndez-Garc\u00eda at Chile\u2019s Valparaiso University began detecting even more regular X-ray bursts from Ansky. The rare events allowed astronomers to once again aim their tools like the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope and NASA\u2019s Chandra<\/a>, NICER, and Swift telescopes at Ansky. Hern\u00e1ndez-Garc\u00eda and collaborators then determined the black hole was displaying a phenomenon known as a quasiperiodic eruption, or QPE.<\/p>\n

\u201cQPEs 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,\u201d said Hern\u00e1ndez-Garc\u00eda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

XMM-Newton proved particularly critical to studying Ansky\u2019s behavior, since it is the only telescope sensitive enough to capture fainter background X-ray light amid the black hole\u2019s stronger X-ray bursts. By comparing the two phases, astronomers could calculate the amount of energy released by Ansky during its more active periods.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationESA\u2019s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA<\/a>) mission is the first space-based observatory dedicated to detecting ripples in the fabric of spacetime. Credit: ESA <\/p>\n

While a black hole inevitably destroys everything it captures, objects behave differently during their impending demise. A star, for example, generally stretches apart into a bright, hot, fast-spinning disc known as an accretion disc<\/a>. Most astronomers have theorized that black holes generate QPEs when a comparatively small object like a star or even a smaller black hole collides with an accretion disc. In the case of Ansky, however, there isn\u2019t any evidence linking it to the death of a star.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bursts of X-rays from Ansky are ten times longer and ten times more luminous than what we see from a typical QPE,\u201d said MIT PhD student<\/a> and study co-author Joheen Chakraborty. \u201cEach of these eruptions is releasing a hundred times more energy than we have seen elsewhere. Ansky\u2019s eruptions also show the longest cadence ever observed, of about 4.5 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Astronomers must now consider other explanations for Ansky\u2019s remarkable behavior. One theory posits that the accretion disc could come from nearby galactic gas pulled in by the black hole instead of a star. If true, then the X-rays may originate from high energy shocks to the disc caused by a small cosmic object repeatedly passing through and disrupting orbital matter.<\/p>\n

As it stands, astronomers possess more QPE models than data from actual events. Thanks to Ansky\u2019s reawakening, that may soon change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t yet understand what causes them,\u201d said Hern\u00e1ndez-Garc\u00eda<\/a>. \u201cStudying Ansky will help us to better understand black holes and how they evolve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A black hole is a terrifying concept, but the mysterious nexus of physics and space-time isn\u2019t always gobbling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[9948,7021,3014,9949,874,70,413,9947,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-14374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronomers","9":"tag-black-hole","10":"tag-european-space-agency","11":"tag-lorena-hernandez-garcia","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-supermassive-black-hole","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114326309693009809","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}