Black holes continue to be a huge question mark to both astronomers, physicists and everyone in between but thanks to a particular captured image from Nasa, we may find out more about the allusive spots.
It is known that black holes have a heavy gravitational pull so nothing can leave its grasp, including light.
That being said, thanks to Nasa’s Explorer missions Swift and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR,) a huge eruption of X-ray light was seen leaving from the center of a supermassive black hole close to 324 million light years away, in the Pegasus constellation.
Whoa, doc — that’s heavy.
This caused researches to ask the question ‘why do black holes flare’?
The black hole images, known as Markarian 335 or Mrk 335, suggests that when coronas build up around black holes, they shoot away from them which causes a beam of X-ray light.
Coronas are a source of very energetic particles.
Not to be confused with the OTHER type of Corona that makes you FEEL like a very energetic particle…
Saint Mary’s University’s Dan Wilkins in Halifax, Canada, said:
“This is the first time we have been able to link the launching of the corona to a flare. This will help us understand how supermassive black holes power some of the brightest objects in the universe.”
And it should be noted that as a black hole does not release light on their own, they can have a glowing disk around them which is actually a build-up of particles.
They are also found to have coronas but to this day, it is a mystery as to how they look or how they form. But thanks to a study from Nasa, it was found that they are most likely formed through a “lamppost” model.
Nasa said in a statement:
“The ‘lamppost’ model says they are compact sources of light, similar to light bulbs, that sit above and below the black hole, along its rotation axis. The new data support the ‘lamppost’ model – and demonstrate, in the finest detail yet, how the light-bulb-like coronas move.”
Mr. Wilkins described how the light ejected from Mrk 335 happened in the first place…
“The corona gathered inward at first and then launched upwards like a jet. We still don’t know how jets in black holes form, but it’s an exciting possibility that this black hole’s corona was beginning to form the base of a jet before it collapsed.”
And as coronas move very fast, Scientists say this particular one was moving at 20 percent the speed of light.
Nasa continued: “When this happens, and the corona launches in our direction, its light is brightened in an effect called relativistic Doppler boosting. Putting this all together, the results show that the X-ray flare from this black hole was caused by the ejected corona.”
Exciting discoveries happening in the science world!
And as long as the discovery does not have anything to do with said black holes sucking up the earth, it’s cool in my book.
Scroll on to see the ever mysterious Mrk 335 for yourself!
It won’t disappoint.
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