Astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered 8 new black hole binaries in the Milky Way, instead of just two systems that emit X-ray echoes, as previously known by using the new research tool “Echo Machine”, to comb satellite data for black hole flashes and echoes. .
After comparing the echoes across systems, the team was able to piece together an overall picture of how the black hole evolved during the cosmic explosion. They observed that the black hole first underwent a solid state that caused a halo of high-energy “photons” along with a jet of relativistic particles that were shot away at nearly the speed of light.
The researchers found that at a certain point, the black hole emits a high-energy flash, before transitioning to a “soft” low-energy state. These findings could help explain how the massive black holes at the center of the Milky Way can spit out particles across vast cosmic scales to form a galaxy. According to the study published in the journal “The Astrophysical”.
“The role of black holes in the evolution of galaxies is a salient question in modern astrophysics,” said Irene Kara, associate professor of physics at MIT. “Interestingly, black hole binaries appear to be supermassive, so by understanding the explosions in these small nearby systems, we can understand how similar explosions in supermassive black holes affect the galaxies in which they live.”