A new study has found that the powerful jets of wind blowing out of a black hole only occur after it builds up a hot outer layer of plasma called the corona. Researchers observed the behavior of a black hole in our galaxy and developed a cosmic echocardiogram graph, showing its “heartbeat.”
Researchers in the black hole GRS 1915+105 have identified these plasma beams. GRS 1915+105 is not an isolated black hole, but a double system consisting of a black hole and a normal star orbiting each other. This dual system is located in our Milky Way galaxy about 36,000 light-years from Earth. The black hole weighs about twelve times our sun, making it one of the heaviest known stellar black holes.
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About the researchers who came up with this research
The researchers who came up with this discovery came from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the University of Southampton. They collected 15 years of data from various telescopes. Among other things, they aimed the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer at the black hole GRS 1915+105 from space about every three days and collected high-energy X-rays from the corona. The astronomers combined the X-ray data with that from the Ryle Telescope.
This is a collection of radio dishes about 90 kilometers north of London, which receives low-energy radio emissions from the black hole’s radius almost every day. The researchers suggest that the principle they demonstrated may also apply to more massive black holes, such as the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way.
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