It was dormant for more than 20 years, exhibiting very little fluctuations in light. Then one day, it woke up, baffling astronomers around the world.
A supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A* has just started flashing 75 times brighter than it has ever been seen before, following a two-decade ‘quiet’ period, RT reports.
UCLA Astronomer Tuan Do and his team observed the transformation of the black hole using the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii over four nights.
The team observed a bizarre flash on May 13, and captured it in a two-hour time-lapse that condensed the phenomenon down to just a few seconds.
Check it out below:
Here's a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we've seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night! pic.twitter.com/MwXioZ7twV
— Tuan Do (@quantumpenguin) August 11, 2019
As Do explained, the footage above begins with Sagittarius at its brightest, or at least the brightest point that the team saw and recorded.
Astronomers from all over the world are now scrambling to collect data and figure out exactly what caused the phenomenon.
So far, there are several theories.
“Maybe more gas is falling into the black hole and that leads to higher amounts of accretion, which leads to it being brighter,” Do told a science publication.
There’s also the possibility that the black hole consumed a nearby gas cloud that had been documented nearby in 2014.
But at least five powerful research telescopes will continue to observe the black hole for as long as it’s visible.
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The title of this piece is misleading,
“Supermassive Black Hole ‘Wakes Up’, Starts Flashing ’75 Times Brighter Than Ever Before’”
I clicked on it thinking it would be about Sheila Jackson Lee finally having an intelligent thought.
Why would you EVER think that?
A Blackhole tax would likely fix this problem.
Yes. This is a manmade space change. Like a carbon tax we now need a vacuum of space tax.
Somebody probably just changed a bulb on the firmament.
I thought the whole idea of black holes is that they don’t let ANY light escape???
This is a good point. Scientists are still arguing over whether black holes can emit radiation. For me this is about as pointless as discussing whether unicorns fart, because there is about equal evidence for the existence of both black holes and unicorns. Black holes are a theoretical construct used to explain why galaxies don’t fly apart due to the forces from spinning overcoming the forces of gravity, which is what gravitational laws predict. The so-called photographs of black holes are from radiation bending around something in space near where scientists expect a black hole to be, or some other unexplained thing happening there. Non-gravitational causes, such as possible electromagnetic effects, go against the prevailing dogma and are ignored.
I find the ‘belief’ in black holes by science minded people hugely ironic:
Ghosts? No, no material evidence. Not real.
God? No, no material evidence. Not real.
Bigfoot? No, no material evidence. Not real.
Space Aliens? No, no material evidence.
Chupacabra? Haha! NFW!
Black Holes? No material evidence. OMFG! SO REAL!!!
The black hole emits nothing, but the “event horizon” surrounding it, where matter is accelerated exponentially before falling into the black hole, is capable of emitting radiation in various spectra – or so I (vaguely) understand, from previous physics courses.
However, physics these days changes flavors hourly (“string theory”, anyone? Quarks, gluons, muons oh my! Relativity is old hat, and special relativity isn’t!) so my understanding may be as out of date as last month’s croissants ….
In addition to rooting for the asteroid and the comet, I am now also rooting for the black hole.
Morse code telling us we’re fucked.
Dang… I thought this meant that Moochele finally got that sex change operation .
The part that is interesting to me anyway is the distance to Sag A: Distance to Earth: 25,640 light years.
The number 26,000 seems to pop up in interesting places…..more to chew on.
Welcome to the electric universe.
Beat me to it. You ever notice how scientists are always “baffled” at new phenomena… for a group claiming intellectual highground they never seem to question their root assumptions despite being so consistently baffled.
I don’t know if the claims of the EU guys really holds water, but i am sure that their critiques of the standard model are sound enough to warrant serious consideration from all scientists who genuinely seek the truth. That these critiques are never given the slightest mention by the mainstream scientific community says a lot about the scientific community.
To me, this story could not more clearly state that black holes are not what the standard model suggests they are. Gravity wells so strong to suck in even light and thereby create a darker void in the dark void of space do not suddenly turn brighter than all the neighboring stars. This is perhaps the strongest evidence I’ve seen that the standard model is simply wrong, at least when it comes to astrophysics.
God’s pager just went off.
“black hole consumed a gas cloud” sounds like a hot date involving barry soetoro and dr. tim whatley.
These kinds of “discoveries” always baffle me. It takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to travel from the sun to the earth.
How long did it take this “flashing light” to reach earth? This black hole is 26,000 light years from earth, so…..26,000 years ago it started flashing and the light finally reached earth?
But then if time is relative and not fixed it would take 26,000 years as measured by clocks on Earth, and no time at all for the light emitted….do I worry or not?
Not.