Frisky black hole just won't settle down

Joanna Carver, reporter

(Image: NASA/MIT/F. Baganoff et al.)

The black hole at the centre of our galaxy isn't growing old gracefully. Every day or so this big beast belies its age by shooting off an X-ray flare that can outshine its usual output by more than a hundred times.

This image, taken in February by NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory, shows the brightest such flare ever seen. It's 150 times brighter than the usual luminosity of the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*. It's not clear why these flares happen, but researcher Michael Nowak of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the study, suggests they may be the last gasps of asteroids being swallowed by the black hole.

"We're learning what black holes do when they're old," says Joey Neilsen, another MIT astrophysicist who worked on the study. "They're no young whippersnappers like quasars, but they're still active, and how they're active is an interesting question."

The black hole itself isn't really shining, since it's such a powerful space-time-defying vacuum of everything that even light has no way out. It's actually the stuff that it's sucking down that's rubbing against itself, emitting radiation before its inevitable destruction.

By the way, if you want to look into the face of dark inescapable obliteration, look skyward, between the Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations. You can't see it, but it can see you.

Journal reference: The Astrophysical Journal, DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/759/2/95

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