Astronomers have discovered just recently fast-powerful, spinning jets coming from a black hole located about 8,000 light years from Earth. The black hole is known as V404 Cygni and is acting in a way never seen before on such short registry.
The bizarre thing is that these high-speed jets seem to be spinning with clouds of plasma, probably just minutes away, exploding out of the black hole in all directions. Also, the orientation of the changing jet can be shaped as the Lense-Thirring procession of a vertically enlarged slim disk that rises up from the super-Eddington accretion rate.
Associate Professor James Miller-Jones from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and the lead author of the study said that this black hole has one of the most incredible systems that he’s ever seen. Like the majority of the black holes, this one is too, feeding on a nearby star, dragging away gas from the sun and forming a sphere of material that cycles the black hole and curling towards it under gravity.
How is V404 Cygni black hole different from other black holes
The difference between ‘normal’ black holes and V404 Cygni is that researchers think the disk of material and the black hole are not aligned, and that seems to be the cause of the inner part of the disk to quiver like a spinning top and shot jets out in different directions as it revisions its orientation.
The change in the movement of the jets was due to the accumulation disk of matter around the black hole, Associate Professor Miller-Jones said. V404 Cygni’s accretion disk is 10 million kilometers wide, and the interior few thousand kilometers was expanded upwards and spinning.
Study co-author Dr. Gemma Anderson who is also based at ICRAR’s Curtin University node said that the wobble of the inner accumulation disk could occur in other extreme events in the Universe as well. Whenever there is a misalignment between the spin of a black hole and the matter collapsing in, this occurrence can be seen when a black hole starts feeding at an increased speed. The study was released and published in the journal Nature.
Brad is a former Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, is an award-winning travel, culture, and parenting writer. His writing has appeared in many of the Canada’s most respected and credible publications, including the Toronto Star, CBC News and on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine. A meticulous researcher who’s not afraid to be controversial, he is nationally known as a journalist who opens people’s eyes to the realities behind accepted practices in the care of children. Brad is a contributing journalist to