Scientists recently captured the "heartbeat" of a black hole - solving a key mystery of plasma jets with this discovery. The black hole's heartbeat or fluctuating light emanating from it was observed for 15 years - revealing to us how black holes feed.
Outside of the black hole's event horizon, a structure called corona forms. Following this, strong jets of plasma begin to launch from the poles. This process pushes out material from the corona into interstellar space at speeds closer to that of light in a vacuum, ScienceAlert explained.
This process is being called a heartbeat of sorts - resolving questions about how black holes function.
Earlier, scientists thought that the corona and the jet were the same thing. But as is turns out, "they arise one after the other and that the jet follows from the corona," as astrophysicist Mariano Mendez from University of Groningen explained to ScienceAlert.
The black hole observed for the experiment is called GRS 1915+105 - located about 36,000 light-years away from the Sun. This black hole feeds off a nearby object that is a star.
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This black hole is over 12 times the mass of our Sun, making it one of the biggest black holes known in our galaxy. Scientists set out to understand how jets are formed, for which they collected x-ray and radio data on the black hole from 1996 and 2012.
Also read:?Researchers Spot Black Hole Spinning On Its Side For The Very First Time
The findings from this study help scientists understand how black holes feed and could shed light on the processes that facilitate it. What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments below.?For more in the world of?technology?and?science, keep reading?Indiatimes.com.
References
Starr, M. (2022). ¡°Heartbeat¡± of Black Holes Solves Decades-Old Mystery of Plasma Jets. ScienceAlert.?