CXC: Scientists Discover Black Hole Has Three Hot Meals a Day

[bystander]

Scientists Discover Black Hole Has Three Hot Meals a Day
NASA | SAO | Chandra X-ray Observatory | 2019 Sep 11

GSN 069 ~ X-ray: NASA/CXO/CSIC-INTA/G.Miniutti et al.; Optical: DSS

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A supermassive black hole is blasting out X-rays about every nine hours, according to data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, as described in our latest press release. This indicates that this black hole, containing about 400,000 times the mass of our Sun, is consuming significant amounts of material about three times per day.

The main panel of this graphic is a visible light image taken by the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) around the galaxy known as GSN 069, located in the center of the image. The inset gives a time-lapse of Chandra data taken over a period of about 20 hours on February 14 and 15, 2019, centered on the X-ray source in the middle of GSN 069. The sequence runs in a loop to show that the X-ray brightness of the source changes regularly and dramatically over the Chandra observation. Three X-ray eruptions are observed. (Note that to clearly show the Chandra source is located in GSN 069, the size of the box in the center of the DSS image is about ten times larger than the Chandra field in the inset.)

XMM-Newton was the first to observe this phenomenon in GSN 069 with the detection of two bursts on December 24, 2018. Researchers then followed up with more XMM-Newton observations on January 16 and 17, 2019, and found five outbursts. The Chandra observations less than a month later — on February 14 and 15 — revealed an additional three outbursts.

These repetitive outbursts are evidence that the supermassive black hole at the center of GSN 069, located 250 million light years from Earth, is consuming about four Moons' worth of material about three times a day. That's equivalent to almost a million billion billion pounds going into the black hole per feeding. ...

Spectacularly Rapid and Regular X-ray Eruptions Observed from an Active Galaxy
Nature News | 2019 Sep 11

Nine-Hour X-ray Quasi-Periodic Eruptions from a Low-Mass Black Hole Galactic Nucleus ~ G. Miniutti et al

• Nature 573(7774):381 (19 Sep 2019) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1556-x
• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1909.04693 > 10 Sep 2019

[Ann]

Fascinating! But please note that a mass of 400,000 times the mass of our Sun is not that much for supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. Of course, this black hole is actively consuming matter and growing heftier right now. But if this black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter each day, how long will it take before it is as massive as the black hole in the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*?

Ann

[neufer]

Fascinating! But please note that a mass of 400,000 times the mass of our Sun is not that much for supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. Of course, this black hole is actively consuming matter and growing heftier right now. But if this black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter each day, how long will it take before it is as massive as the black hole in the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*?

This black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter every 9 hours.

At that rate it will double in mass in 26 billion years.

[Ann]

Fascinating! But please note that a mass of 400,000 times the mass of our Sun is not that much for supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. Of course, this black hole is actively consuming matter and growing heftier right now. But if this black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter each day, how long will it take before it is as massive as the black hole in the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*?

This black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter every 9 hours.

At that rate it will double in mass in 26 billion years.

Thanks, Art! What would I do without you?

(Seriously, I mean it... thanks for your math service!!)

Ann

[neufer]

Fascinating! But please note that a mass of 400,000 times the mass of our Sun is not that much for supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. Of course, this black hole is actively consuming matter and growing heftier right now. But if this black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter each day, how long will it take before it is as massive as the black hole in the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*?

This black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter every 9 hours.

At that rate it will double in mass in 26 billion years.

Thanks, Art!

In doing the calculation I realized that this black hole could easily munch away on a star for thousands of years without having much of an impact of the periodic dynamic system.

If this black hole were substituted for our Sun it would be ~50% larger than the Sun (although it would appear visually to be 3X that size) and the Earth would orbit it about once every 14 hours [= 1 year/sqrt(400,000)].

Now replace the Earth with the Sun and make the orbit more elliptical such that the Roche limit is skirted and one might actually have a situation that is being observed.

[Ann]

This black hole eats four Moons' worth of matter every 9 hours.

At that rate it will double in mass in 26 billion years.

Thanks, Art!

In doing the calculation I realized that this black hole could easily munch away on a star for thousands of years without having much of an impact of the periodic dynamic system.

If this black hole were substituted for our Sun it would be ~50% larger than the Sun (although it would appear visually to be 3X that size) and the Earth would orbit it about once every 14 hours [= 1 year/sqrt(400,000)].

Now replace the Earth with the Sun and make the orbit more elliptical such that the Roche limit is skirted and one might actually have a situation that is being observed.

Thanks again. Most interesting.

Ann