A black hole that is ejecting hot material into space at almost the speed of light has been seen by astronomers.
The distance between a black hole and its partner star is
10,000 light-years. The MAXI J1820 + 070 system is created when these two
cosmic objects come together. The hot material was observed by NASA's Chandra
x-ray telescope exiting the black hole at almost the speed of light.
The Chandra Space Telescope of NASA captured video of a
black hole ejecting hot material into space at nearly the speed of light.
According to the researchers, the black hole in the MAXI
J1820 + 070 system has a mass around eight times that of the sun, indicating
that it is a stellar-sized black hole formed by the collapse of a massive star.
Supermassive black holes, on the other hand, have millions or billions of times
the mass of the sun.
The companion star orbiting the black hole has almost the
same mass as the sun. The immense gravity of the black hole drags the companion
star’s material toward the black hole’s X-ray-producing disc.
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The immense gravity of the black hole drags the companion
star’s material toward the black hole’s X-ray-producing disc.
While some of the heated gas in the disc will reach the
“event horizon” and fall into the black hole, some will be ejected in a number
of brief beams of jets from the black hole. These jets are released along
magnetic field lines from beyond the event horizon and aim in opposite
directions.
Chandra’s four observations in November 2018 and February,
May, and June 2019 offered a new picture of the black hole’s activities. It was
discovered in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by Mathilde Espinasse of the
University of Paris in a study.
The video below from NASA shows what the telescope
discovered.
The images show a massive optical and infrared view of the
Milky Way galaxy captured by Hawaii’s PanSTARRS optical telescope, with MAXI
J1820 + 070 indicated by a cross on the plane of the galaxy. The video inset
illustrates Chandra’s four observations, with “day 0” matching to the first observation
on November 13, 2018, about four months after the jet was launched.
The bright X-ray source in the image’s center is MAXI J1820
+ 070, and X-ray sources can be observed moving north and south in jets away
from the black hole.
MAXI J1820 + 070 is an X-ray point source, yet its
brightness makes it appear larger than a point source. The southern jet is too
faint to be identified in May and June 2019 measurements.
As a result, how fast are the material jets departing the
black hole? From Earth’s perspective, the northern jet appears to be traveling
at 60% the speed of light, while the southern jet appears to be traveling at
1600% the speed of light, which sounds preposterous. After all, nothing can
move faster than the speed of light.
This is an example of superluminal motion, which occurs when
an object approaches us at almost the speed of light and in a direction
parallel to our line of sight. This means that the item approaches us nearly as
quickly as the light it emits, giving the impression that the jet is flying
faster than the speed of light.
The MAXI J1820 + 070's south jet is heading in our direction
while the north jet is facing away, indicating that the south is travelling
more quickly than the north. Only two previous instances of such fast X-ray
ejections from stellar-mass black holes, according to Chandra, have been
documented.