Everything we thought we knew about Black Holes may be up for debate. Two NASA space telescopes observed something unusual from the massive black hole, Markarian 335. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) was one of these essential space telescopes. These telescopes picked up a huge pulse of X-Ray energy escaping from the eye of the black hole.
The Black Hole has been the most feared phenomena of Space. Once pulled in, nothing can escape the mighty gravitational pull of a Black Hole. Not even light can escape its might grasp. That is what we thought before NASA saw the pulse escape.
Scientists are excited about this new finding. How will this change our understanding of Black Holes?
“This is the first time we have been able to link the launching of the corona to a flare,” Dan Wilkins, of Saint Mary’s University, said. “This will help us understand how super massive black holes power some of the brightest objects in the universe.”
(via Zon News)
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Well, not exactly. To oversimplify, the timespace around a rotating black hole is twisted, like a wash cloth you are wringing to get the water out. Electrons from the matter in the accretion disk that are close enough to the event horizon actually have their charge smeared around the black hole. This turn the black hole into a battery w/mucho voltage. So what happens is that matter from the accretion disk is forced into incredibly intense matter streams shooting out both poles of the black hole. These matter streams can be hundreds of light years long and influence the birth rate of stars in their galaxy, but I digress. The unusual emission we are talking about in the news is from one of these matter streams. Nobody is claiming it’s matter escaping from within the event horizon. According to Nasa, it’s not even surprising:
“The baffling and strange behaviors of black holes have become somewhat less mysterious recently, with new observations from NASA’s Explorer missions Swift and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR.” (http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/august/nasas-nustar-sees-rare-blurring-of-black-hole-light)
Great post Larry, I just wanted to clarify this point. I have read many books on black holes and wanted to add my two cents.
-James Frater, grammar Nazi and science enthusiast.
Thanks for the clarification James. I love reading your thoughts.