Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a giant “blowtorch-like” jet coming out of a black hole that appears to cause nearby stars to explode.
Deliveries of a giant jet coming out of a black hole
The 3,000 light-year-long trail of fiery plasma comes from a supermassive black hole with a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun, located at the center of the M87 galaxy.
Getting caught in this beam would be deadly for any cosmic object, but according to new observations, even being in its vicinity can be devastating. The beam of superheated energy appears to cause nearby star systems to erupt in explosions called novae. However, exactly why this happens remains a mystery.
“We don’t know what’s going on, but it’s just a very exciting discovery,” said study lead author Alec Lessing, an astrophysicist at Stanford University, in a NASA statement. “This means there is something missing in our understanding of how black hole jets interact with their surroundings.”
The researchers published their findings on the pre-print server arXivso they have yet to be peer-reviewed.
THE black holes Supermassives are usually found at the centers of galaxies, sucking in matter from their surroundings before spitting it out at extreme speeds, thus creating a feedback process that shapes how galaxies evolve.
As matter approaches the “mouth” of a black hole, friction causes it to heat up and emit light trillions of times brighter than the brightest stars that can be detected by telescopes. Occasionally, active black holes channel this infalling matter into giant jets of energy that pour out into space, sometimes encompassing entire galaxies.
How these jets affect their surroundings is largely unknown. Pointing Hubble near the M87 jet, the researchers found that twice as many novae were erupting in star systems near the jet as in the larger galaxy.
Novae typically occur in binary star systems after a white dwarf, the smoldering shell of a dead star, steals hydrogen fuel from its normal stellar companion, causing the white dwarf to explode like a giant nuclear bomb. It appears that the black hole jet is causing the same thing in these nova systems, but the exact mechanism has not been observed.
“There’s something the jet is doing to star systems floating around,” Lessing said. “Maybe the jet somehow sweeps away the hydrogen fuel on the white dwarfs, causing them to erupt more frequently.
“However, it is not clear whether it was a physical push,” he added. “It could be the effect of the pressure of the light emanating from the jet. When you release hydrogen faster, you get faster eruptions. Something could double the rate of mass transfer on white dwarfs near the jet.”
Another possibility, the researchers say, is that material from the jet was somehow captured by normal companion stars, spilling onto their white dwarf counterparts.
To find the answers, astronomers will have to look for direct observations of stellar eruptions occurring around cosmic jets. It’s not easy, but given that a nova erupts every day in M87, it’s not impossible.
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