In this artist’s depiction, a white dwarf is orbiting the supermassive black hole. Photo: NASA /Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University
- The supermassive black hole has sent out flashes that have increased in speed
- Astronomers say it is the first time anything like it has been seen
- The black hole is in a galaxy 270 million light-years away
- The flashes may be explained by a white dwarf star in its orbit
A supermassive black hole 270 million lightyears away has surprised astronomers by sending out x-ray flashes that have increased in speed.
An international team of astronomers have been monitoring the black hole and according to NASA, they have detected features that have never been seen before.
Over two years astonomers detected x-ray flashes coming from the black hole, known as 1ES 1927+654, which were steadily increasing in speed, NASA said, from every 18 minutes to every seven.
It was the first ever measurement of its kind around a supermassive black hole, NASA said.
Astronomers had been watching the black hole since 2018 when plasma which made up its corona, disappeared.
"Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since," Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) said.
Since 2018, the black hole had returned to a quiet state, until April 2023, when a team led by Sibasish Laha at UMBC and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, noted a steady months-long increase in low energy x-rays.
Researchers believed the most likely reason for this change would be due to a spinning white dwarf star orbiting around the black hole and getting close to its edge without falling in.
Megan Masterson, a graduate student in physics at MIT, who co-led the discovery, said if that was the case, the white dwarf would be the closest thing researchers know of around any black hole.
"This tells us that objects like white dwarfs may be able to live very close to an event horizon for a relatively extended period of time."
If so, the white dwarf would be sending out gravitational waves which could be detected in the future.
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