Because black holes can't be studied directly, scientists often watch their feeding habits to understand what these behemoths are doing. So what does it mean when a black hole suddenly stops gobbling up gas completely — and then just as suddenly starts again, hungrier than ever?
That was the puzzle scientists faced as they watched a galaxy known as 1ES 1927+654 over a monthslong span of 2018. Although the bright mess left by a black hole's feeding habits often grows and shrinks, this time, scientists saw something unprecedented: a near-total dimming and then a brightening far beyond the galaxy's previous average.
Many things are taking place:
Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes | Black Hole News, Updates
The team paired the Chandra X-ray Observatory data with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and other key observatories to search for a notoriously elusive type of black hole called a "heavily obscured" black hole. These newly formed supermassive black holes are surrounded by dense clouds of gas and dust, which they feed off of in order to grow to gargantuan sizes. Because of this dense cloud, they're almost impossible to spot.
Chiaberge and his colleagues suspect these types of supermassive black holes emit the same amount of X-rays but, because of their dense cloud shielded, they're hidden from the view of prying telescopes.
'Planet Nine' Might Be an Ancient Black Hole - ExtremeTech
We tend to think of the solar system as our little corner of the universe, but there are still a lot of things we don’t know about it. For example, what’s perturbing the orbits of small space rocks out past the orbit of Neptune? Some scientists believe there’s another planet out there, often called Planet Nine . What if it’s not a planet, though?
For decades, the solar system had nine official planets, but Pluto was kicked out of the planet club and demoted to dwarf planet status. Astronomers felt that was the only logical conclusion after learning more about other Pluto-like objects far out in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy rocks out past Neptune. That also goes to show you how much there still is to learn about this region of space and how a planet, or even a black hole, could be hiding in the void.
Cases of Black Hole Mistaken Identity | NASA
Other things to check out:
Are there any black holes left over from the Big Bang? | Space
In 2016, the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) team surprised and delighted the world when they announced the first-ever discovery of gravitational waves , emanating from a collision of two black holes billions of years ago.
And along with the flurry of excitement (and a few Nobel prizes for good measure) came a strange little surprise. The black holes had very peculiar masses, peculiar enough that it opened up a fascinating possibility: the black holes that LIGO heard collide may have been forged when the universe was less than a second old.
Alien Civilization Could Use a Black Hole to Generate Energy - 50-Year-Old Theory Experimentally
Artist’s impression of an inner accretion flow and a jet from a supermassive black hole when it is actively feeding, for example, from a star that it recent tore apart. Image: ESO/L. Calçada
In 1969, British physicist Roger Penrose suggested that energy could be generated by lowering an object into the black hole’s ergosphere – the outer layer of the black hole’s event horizon, where an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in order to remain still.
Astronomers Discover 'Missing Link' Black Hole at The Heart of a Ghostly Galaxy
A faint and ghostly galaxy 10 million light-years away has delivered one of the holy grails of black hole astronomy.
At its heart, lies a black hole that looks to belong to an elusive middleweight class of intermediate-mass black holes , a discovery that could help us understand how some of the most massive black holes form.
While the boundaries between intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) and supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are currently not very well defined, IMBHs are generally considered to be larger than a typical collapsed star (up to a hundred solar masses) but not supermassive ( between a million and a billion times more mass than a typical stellar black hole).
Look, Up in the Sky! Is it a Black Hole? Is it a Neutron Star? Good Question. | astrobites
Title: GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M ☉ Black Hole with a 2.6 M ☉ Compact Object
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GW190814 is similar to GW190412 in that the difference in the masses of the merging objects is large. The heavier object is conclusively a black hole with a mass 23 times the mass of the Sun (solar masses, or M ☉ ), and the smaller one is only 2.6 M ☉ , as shown in Figure 2. However, it is unclear whether the 2.6 M ☉ object is a black hole or a neutron star. Either way, it is record-breaking!
Happening on Twitter
A runaway star might have been the culprit in this black hole mystery. Black holes emit X-ray light when they feed,… https://t.co/2csoacQNDP NASAJPL (from Pasadena, Calif.) Thu Jul 16 18:25:20 +0000 2020
The mystery of a black hole's disappearing (and reappearing) meal may be solved https://t.co/j2oDAfwGZr https://t.co/B3vTYz9iSH SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Fri Jul 17 20:08:35 +0000 2020
Harvard scientists think they can solve the mystery of 'planet nine' – and it isn't a planet at all https://t.co/cEolKVbI76 Independent (from London, England) Thu Jul 09 16:34:29 +0000 2020
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