2023-06-25 14:10:05
The “black hole” in the “Milky Way” is not always idle A new study showed that the “massive black hole” that lies at the center of the “Milky Way” galaxy, to which planet Earth belongs, is not permanently idle, as was thought. The first picture taken of the black hole. (NASA) According to a study published in the latest issue of the journal “Nature”, “this sleeping monster woke up regarding 200 years ago, to devour some nearby cosmic bodies, before going back to sleep once more.” The researchers said that NASA’s X-ray Polarization Explorer (IXPE) detected an X-ray echo of this ancient activity, which was practiced by the supermassive black hole (Sagittarius A *), known as (Sgr A *). This black hole, more than four million times the mass of the sun, is located 27,000 light-years from Earth in the center of the spiral galaxy of the Milky Way, and last year astronomers revealed the first image of it, or rather the glowing ring of gas that surrounds its blackness. Frederic Marin, a researcher at the French Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg, and first author of the study, said in a statement to the French Research Agency issued Friday, that “the black hole (Sgr A *) has always been seen as a dormant black hole, but the study has proven that it is like a bear entering hibernation. After devouring everything around him.” Most of the supermassive black holes located in the middle of their galaxies become inactive following swallowing all the material close to them, but the international research team discovered that at the end of the nineteenth century, “the black hole came out of its slumber and devoured the objects that were within its reach, and the feeding frenzy continued.” Several months to a year, before the beast returns to hibernation. Marin explains that when the black hole was active, it was “at least a million times brighter than it is today, and its awakening was noticeable because nearby galactic molecular clouds began emitting more X-ray light.” “The surge in X-ray light was as if a single glow-worm hidden in a forest had suddenly become as bright as the sun,” says the French Research Agency. Using NASA’s Polarized X-ray Imaging Explorer, astronomers were able to track the X-ray light, and found that it was pointing directly at the black hole (Sgr A *), where it “emitted an echo of its previous activity, which researchers were able to monitor for the first time.” The gravity of black holes is so intense that nothing, including light, can escape from them, but when matter is sucked beyond the black hole’s final boundary, known as the event horizon, it emits an enormous amount of heat and light before disappearing into darkness. It remains unclear why (Sgr A*) briefly came out of quiescence, and astronomers hope that additional observations from the Polarizing X-ray Imaging Explorer will help them better understand what happened, and perhaps reveal more regarding the origin of supermassive black holes, which Still shrouded in mystery.
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