{"id":5533,"date":"2020-06-15T13:46:46","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T12:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=5533"},"modified":"2020-06-15T13:46:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T12:46:46","slug":"detecting-the-heartbeat-of-a-supermassive-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/detecting-the-heartbeat-of-a-supermassive-black-hole\/5533\/","title":{"rendered":"Detecting the heartbeat of a supermassive black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"
After years of its signal being blocked by our Sun, an international research team used X-ray satellites<\/a> to observe the heartbeat of a supermassive black hole.<\/p>\n Research teams from the National Astronomical Observatories<\/a>, Chinese Academy of Sciences<\/a>, China, and Durham University<\/a>, UK, indicate that this is the most long lived heartbeat of a supermassive black hole.<\/p>\n The supermassive black hole’s heartbeat was first detected in 2007 at the centre of a galaxy called RE J1034+396 which is approximately 600 million light years from Earth. Research indicates that the signal from this supermassive black hole repeated every hour.<\/p>\n In 2018 the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray satellite<\/a> was able to finally re-observe the black hole and the same repeated heartbeat could still be seen. Matter falling on to a supermassive black hole as it feeds from the accretion disc of material surrounding it releases an enormous amount of power from a comparatively tiny region of space, but this is rarely seen as a specific repeatable pattern like a heartbeat.<\/p>\n The time between beats can allow researchers to predict the size and structure of the matter close to the black hole’s event horizon. Professor Chris Done of Durham University’s Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Professor Done said: “The main idea for how this heartbeat is formed is that the inner parts <\/a>of the accretion disc are expanding and contracting.<\/p>\nWhat is the heartbeat of a black hole?<\/h3>\n
What can we learn from this heartbeat?<\/h3>\n