ch0k1 on Nostr: Cosmic first: supermassive black hole caught "turning on" in real-time ...
Cosmic first: supermassive black hole caught "turning on" in real-time
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/supermassive-black-hole-caught-turning-on/
At the center of practically every galaxy lies a supermassive black hole. The one in our Milky Way is about four million times the mass of our Sun, but others can be billions or even tens of billions of solar masses. Most of the time, these black holes are quiet: simply gravitating as matter orbits around them. But every once in a while, some object or collection of objects passes too close by the black hole, and the black hole begins to feed on that matter: heating it, accelerating it, and launching jets of particles and radiation. Overall, what gets emitted is so energetic, it can be detected from all across the Universe, with active galaxies and quasars among the most distant objects ever discovered.
originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/851402
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/supermassive-black-hole-caught-turning-on/
At the center of practically every galaxy lies a supermassive black hole. The one in our Milky Way is about four million times the mass of our Sun, but others can be billions or even tens of billions of solar masses. Most of the time, these black holes are quiet: simply gravitating as matter orbits around them. But every once in a while, some object or collection of objects passes too close by the black hole, and the black hole begins to feed on that matter: heating it, accelerating it, and launching jets of particles and radiation. Overall, what gets emitted is so energetic, it can be detected from all across the Universe, with active galaxies and quasars among the most distant objects ever discovered.
originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/851402