Some black holes exhibit a pulsation that resembles a heartbeat even though they are not living beings, but rather a region of space-time with an extremely strong gravitational field.
The black holes that have exhibited this characteristic — only two of the hundreds known to scientists — have something in common: they exist in a binary system, pulling in gas from a nearby star. As the gas is sucked into the black hole, it compresses and heats up to extremely high temperatures, emitting a large amount of X-rays.
When a lot of stellar gas is consumed at once, a large burst of X-rays can occur, and it is in this case that black holes begin to emit a regular pulse, similar to a human heartbeat.
A study by astronomers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Laboratory of Astrophysical Particle Physics in Beijing appears to have solved this mystery by studying the heartbeat of IGR J17091-3624, a black hole located 28,000 light-years from Earth. The paper is published in arXiv platform and was submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.
According to the research, this regular pulse is a result of interactions and instabilities in the matter surrounding the black hole.
As matter falls into the black hole, it is compressed and forms a thin, rapidly rotating disk. If this disk fragments, sending a large amount of material into the black hole, this releases a huge amount of radiation, which generates a pulse similar to a heartbeat. This process begins to repeat itself, feeding back into itself, and assumes a regular rhythm.
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This content was originally published in Astronomers investigate why some black holes have a “heartbeat” on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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