![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Baganoff, a research scientist at MIT Kavli. “Everyone has this picture of black holes as vacuum sweepers, that they suck up absolutely everything,” says Frederick K. As black holes age, they tend to slow down, consuming less and appearing fainter in the sky. The centers of newborn galaxies and quasars can appear extremely bright, giving off massive amounts of energy as they devour their surroundings. Neilsen and his colleagues published their results recently in The Astrophysical Journal.Īstronomers detect black holes by the light energy given off as they swallow nearby matter. “They’re no young whippersnappers like quasars, but they’re still active, and how they’re active is an interesting question.” “We’re learning what black holes do when they’re old,” says Joey Neilsen, a postdoc at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. This brief burst of activity, they say, may be a clue to how mature black holes like Sagittarius A* behave. Scientists observed the flare for more than one hour before it faded away. The flare, recorded from 26,000 light years away, is 150 times brighter than the black hole's normal X-ray luminosity. Now a team of scientists from MIT, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Michigan and elsewhere have used NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory to detect the brightest flare ever observed from Sagittarius A*. It’s unclear what causes such flare-ups, and scientists have sought to characterize these periodic bursts in order to better understand how black holes evolve. However, astronomers have observed that nearly once a day, the black hole rouses to action, emitting a brief burst of light before settling back down. The black hole at the center of our galaxy emits very little energy for its size, giving off roughly as much energy as the sun, even though it is 4 million times as massive. As black holes go, Sagittarius A* is relatively low-key. ![]()
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