The idea that “you can’t have everything” seems to apply to black holes as well. Astronomers have discovered that although these colossal space objects can generate strong winds and emit extremely intense jets of energy, They cannot produce both phenomena at the same time.. The study, published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, shows that black holes function as a kind of “cosmic swing”, alternating between two different ways of ejecting matter and energy.
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This discovery is important because it helps us better understand how black holes grow, how they affect star formation, and how they determine the evolution of the galaxies that surround them.
Scientist Jiachen Jiang of the University of Warwick explained this phenomenon clearly: “We observe what can be described as a vigorous tug-of-war in the black hole’s accretion flow. When the black hole emits a high-speed plasma jet, the X-ray wind weakens, and when the wind picks up again, the jet disappears.”.
“This tells us something fundamental about how black holes regulate their energy production and interact with their environment.”he added.
The finding helps to better understand how these objects regulate star formation and galaxy growth. (Reference photo: Pixabay)
The team came to this conclusion by studying the system 4 In 1630-472which contains a black hole with a mass about ten times that of the Sun. This object is absorbing material from a nearby satellite star.
To observe it, scientists used NASA’s NICER instrument aboard the International Space Station and the MeerKAT radio telescope for three years.
The matter that the black hole steals from its companion star forms a rotating disk of plasma around it, known as an accretion disk. Some of this material falls toward the black hole, but the rest is ejected into space as a wind or jet at close to the speed of light.
What surprised the researchers was that They had never seen strong winds and vigorous jets occur at the same timeeven though the amount of available matter remained constant.
The finding helps to better understand how these objects regulate star formation and galaxy growth. (Reference image created by El Comercio MAG using artificial intelligence “Perplexity”)
Zuobin Zhang of the University of Oxford emphasized the importance of the discovery: “Our observations provide clear evidence that binary black hole systems alternate between powerful jets and energetic winds and never produce both at the same time, highlighting the complex interaction and competition between different forms of ejecting material.”.
Scientists believe that this alternation works as a natural self-regulation mechanism and that the winds and jets compete for the same substance. They also found that although the shape of the ejection changes, the total amount of energy released remains relatively constant.
The research supports the idea that black holes not only absorb matter, but also control how they return it to the universe, directly influencing the formation of new stars and galaxies.
What you need to know about black holes
NASA notes that a black hole is a place in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. They form when a very massive star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself, concentrating all of its mass in an infinitesimal point called a singularity.
There is an invisible boundary around it called the event horizon. Once you cross that line, there is no turning back, as the speed required to escape must be greater than the speed of light. Outside this boundary, an “accretion disk” can often be seen, which is gas and dust spinning at incredible speeds and glowing brightly due to the heat released by friction before being absorbed.
Although we can’t see them directly because they don’t emit light, scientists confirm their existence by observing how they affect nearby stars and galaxies. At the center of almost all large galaxies, including our own Milky Way, is a supermassive black hole that acts as a giant anchor, influencing the movement of millions of stars around it.
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