Black Hole Spied Spitting Out Gas A Second Time

It's exceedingly rare to catch a black hole spewing out matter and gas. Yet, that is what scientists were able to do with a black hole at the center of a galaxy called SDSS J1354+1327 or J1345 for short. When the scientists caught the black hole spewing out matter a second time, it was a scientific first.

Scientists say that two massive outpourings of this type within the span of 100,000 years confirms that supermassive black holes have cycles of hibernation and activity. The thought for many is that anything a black hole captures is sucked in and disappears, but that isn't the case. Sometimes black holes spit material back out.

As the black hole consumes matter such as gas or stars, they generate a powerful outflow of high-energy particles from close to the event horizon. There is a point in a black hole where nothing escapes. This black hole is about 800 million light-years from Earth. It shows up in Chandra data as a bright point of X-ray emissions.

The scientists say that it is bright enough to be millions or billions of times more massive than our sun. The Chandra X-ray observatory data was compared by researchers to visible light data gathered from the Hubble Space Telescope. The comparison found that the black hole is surrounded by a thick cloud of dust and gas.

The scientist found evidence of two bubbles in the gas with on above and one below the black hole and data suggests that the two bubbles formed at different times. The bubbles, known as Fermi bubbles, are usually seen after a black hole gobbles up the nearby matter. The southern bubble has expanded 30,000 light-years from the galactic center and the northern bubble only 3,000. The gap suggested to the team that they occurred about 100,000 years apart.

SOURCE: Sciencealert