These patterns have been named by astronomers “heart flares.”
Courtesy | This causes black holes to release energy in the form of X-rays.
Astronomer Paul Sutter reported in an article published This Thursday, on the Live Science website, a group of researchers from Chinese and German scientific institutions described the process that could cause the so-called “heartbeats” in some black holes.
Black holes are A of the most mysterious and fascinating astronomical objects in space, because they are extremely dense and the gravity beneath their surface is so strong that even light cannot escape from them.
Although black holes are “not alive,” they can have a “heartbeat” if they absorb large amounts of gas from a nearby star. According to Sutter, the matter consumed by these objects is compressed and heated to very high temperatures.
This causes black holes to release energy in the form of X-ray radiation. However, an X-ray flare (explosion) can sometimes occur due to the rapid consumption of gas by these objects. Observations made by scientists show that these events can exhibit some variability, that is, pulses of rhythmic and periodic oscillation signals, resembling the beating of the human heart.
These patterns have been named by astronomers “heart flares.” In a recent study published In the arXiv preprint service, the mechanism that could cause this strange phenomenon has finally been explained.
Why are heartbeats generated?
Scientists came to this conclusion after exhaustively analyzing an eruption from IGR J17091 3624, a black hole located 28,000 light-years from Earth, using data obtained from NASA’s Nicer and Nustar space telescopes. This outbreak occurred in 2022.
According to the authors of the research, when the material falls on a black hole, in addition to being compressed and heated, it forms a thin disk that rotates rapidly. The inner edge of this disk is tilted towards the black hole, while the remaining parts emit X-rays, creating an unstable situation. In fact, the radiation from the disk competes with the gravitational attraction of the black hole.
The pulse begins to be generated when a huge amount of X-rays are released, following the massive inflow of gas into the black hole due to the temporary fragmentation of the disk. The repetition of the pulses is produced by the cyclic heating and settling of gas in the disk, due to the radiation. Sutter noted that these signals have only been observed in two black holes. In 2007, scientists they detected the beating of a black hole at the center of the galaxy RE J1034+396, located nearly 600 million light-years from Earth.
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