![]() ![]() On average, a hot spot typically lasts for a single orbit before being sheared apart by the black hole. “Maybe it needs a bit of time to cool down to show up at low frequencies corresponding to millimeter wavelengths.” It was these latter wavelengths that ALMA was able to detect. Initially, these hot spots might primarily emit X-rays, Wielgus told Astronomy. The breakage also releases energy into the surrounding material, forming a hot bubble of plasma. This magnetic blockage causes gas and dust to clump up in certain areas around the black hole.Įventually, this built-up tension causes one of the magnetic field lines to temporarily break, allowing the black hole to gorge itself. In the case of Sgr A*, the researchers think the magnetic field acts as a barrier, preventing the black hole from devouring as much material as it otherwise would. ![]() One theory points to interactions between material in the black hole's accretion disk and the magnetic field surrounding the black hole. Scientists don’t fully grasp what causes flares such as the one Chandra detected. Astronomers can only theorize as to what goes on beyond this point.īut the region outside the event horizon isn’t free of mysteries either. The event horizon, or “surface” of the black hole, marks this boundary of no return. “Here, we see for the first time a very strong indication that orbiting hot spots are also present in radio observations.”īlack holes are objects where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. “What is really new and interesting is that such flares were so far only clearly present in X-ray and infrared observations of Sagittarius A*,” said lead author Maciek Wielgus of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, in a press release. By coincidence, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) was taking observations of Sgr A* for EHT when that X-ray flare occurred - filling an important data gap.
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