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News! Astronomers have caught a black hole hurling hot material into space at close to the speed of light. The black hole and its companion star make up a system called MAXI J1820+070.
This flare-up was captured in a new movie from @NASA's @chandraxray.
MAXI J1820+070 is in our Milky Way galaxy, & is ~10,000 light years from Earth. The black hole has a mass ~8 times that of our Sun, & is a stellar-mass black hole.
MAXI J1820+070 is in our Milky Way galaxy, & is ~10,000 light years from Earth. The black hole has a mass ~8 times that of our Sun, & is a stellar-mass black hole.
The companion star orbiting the black hole has ~1/2 the mass of the Sun. The black hole's strong gravity pulls material away from the companion star into an X-ray emitting disk surrounding the black hole. (Anim: ESA)
While some hot gas in the disk will cross the event horizon (point of no return) & fall into the black hole, some is blasted away from the black hole in a pair of jets. These jets are pointed in opposite directions, launched from outside the event horizon via magnetic field lines
How fast are the jets of material moving away from the black hole? From Earth's perspective, it looks as if the northern jet is moving at 60% the speed of light, while the southern one is traveling at an impossible-sounding 160% of light speed! More here: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2020/maxij1820/
