Space ray telescopes X XMM-Newton y XRISM have detected a never-before-seen explosion coming from a supermassive black hole, as reported by the European Space Agency (ESA).
In a matter of hours, the gravitational monster generated powerful winds, expelling material into space at dizzying speeds of 60 thousand kilometers per second.
The gigantic black hole hides in NGC 3783, a beautiful spiral galaxy recently photographed by the space telescope Hubble from NASA/ESA.
Astronomers detected a bright flare of X-rays emerging from the black hole before quickly fading away. As it disappeared, fast winds arose, at one-fifth the speed of light.
Lead researcher Liyi Gu of the Netherlands Space Research Organization highlighted that, for the first time, they have seen “how a rapid burst of X-rays from a black hole immediately triggers ultra-fast winds, which form in a single day.”
To study NGC 3783 and its black hole, Gu and his colleagues simultaneously used the XMM-Newton of the European Space Agency and the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a mission led by JAXA with the participation of ESA and NASA.
The black hole in question has a mass equivalent to 30 million suns. By feeding on nearby material, it nourishes an extremely bright and active region at the heart of the spiral galaxy. This region, known as the active galactic nucleus (AGN), shines with all kinds of light and emits powerful jets and winds into the cosmos.
“The AGN are truly fascinating and intense regions, and key targets for both XMM-Newton how to XRISM”adds Matteo Guainazzi, ESA XRISM project scientist and co-author of the discovery.
The expert explains that the winds around this black hole “appear to have been created when the AGN’s tangled magnetic field suddenly ‘uncoiled’, similar to the eruptions that emerge from the Sun, but on a scale almost too large to imagine.”
The black hole winds resemble large solar eruptions of material, known as coronal mass ejections, which form when the Sun ejects streams of superheated material into space. In this way, the study shows that supermassive black holes sometimes act like our own star, making these mysterious objects seem less strange.
In fact, on November 11, a coronal mass ejection was detected on the Sun after an intense flare, with winds associated with this event expelled at initial speeds of 1,500 kilometers per second.
“Windy AGNs also play an important role in how their host galaxies evolve over time and how they form new stars,” adds team member and ESA researcher Camille Diez, who adds that, due to their great influence, “knowing more about the magnetism of AGNs and how they generate winds like these is key to understanding the history of galaxies throughout the universe.”
XMM-Newton has been a pioneering explorer of the hot and extreme universe for more than 25 years, while XRISM has been working to answer key open questions about how matter and energy move through the cosmos since its launch in September 2023.