Scientists Observe Cosmic Matter Being Swallowed and Radio Jets Emitted by a Black Hole

Scientists have observed cosmic matter being swallowed and radio jets emitted by a supermassive black hole.

Astronomers have observed a supermassive black hole emitting powerful radio jets about 300 days after a dramatic increase in its rate of swallowing matter. This observation was made using NASA's Swift X-ray space observatory along with radio observations.

According to ambassador Arjan; The team also managed to estimate the mass of this supermassive black hole, which is at the heart of the Perseus Cluster—a huge collection of thousands of galaxies.

This black hole is located in the center of the galaxy NGC 1275; A galaxy that is about 225 million light-years away from us and is known as the brightest galaxy in the Bersavosh cluster. This massive black hole was first detected through an X-ray flare, which indicated an increasing rate of accretion of matter towards it.

Massive black holes that are actively gobbling up matter are found in regions known as "active galactic nuclei" (AGN); Their enormous gravity heats the surrounding matter and causes it to shine brightly. These radiations are amplified by directing the material towards the poles of the black hole and then throwing them out in the form of two powerful jets; These jets cover a wide range of electromagnetic waves and are particularly prominent in radio waves.

Monitoring the radio jets emitted from the active core at the center of the galaxy NGC 1275 is critical to understanding the relationship between the "accretion disk" (the disk of matter that surrounds and feeds the black hole) and the jets that are ejected into space. Studying this "disc-jet pairing" helps scientists understand how black holes affect the formation of stars in their host galaxies, and thus the growth of those galaxies.

Making these observations is not an easy task; Although the Chandra X-ray Observatory is an ideal tool for studying such emissions, it does not observe NGC 1275 often enough to monitor its long-term behavior. In contrast, although NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has weaker capabilities than the Chandra telescope, since its launch in 2004, it has collected a huge amount of data about the galaxy and its central black hole.

Studying the inner region of this active galactic core is relatively difficult, said Sarah Ketchum, lead author of the research team from the University of Michigan; Because the galaxy NGC 1275 is located in the center of the huge "Perseus Cluster" and this adds extra light to the observations and complicates the data analysis.

He added that the team has developed a model that allows the removal of radiation from the cluster from archived SWIFT data; In this way, they were able to observe the changes in the X-ray flux - which is caused by the process of accretion (absorption) of gas by the black hole - in the period of 2007 to 2025.

Emphasizing that Swift's capabilities were critical to this study, Ketchum noted that NGC 1275 is an ideal laboratory for understanding the relationship between the accretion disk and black hole jets.

He also pointed out that previous studies of other galaxies with active cores had shown evidence of a connection between gas accretion (which can be detected by X-rays) and the outflow of gas in the form of jets (which can be seen by radio waves). However, the galaxy NGC 1275 reveals the effect of black hole jets on very large spatial scales, more clearly than any other system.

In February 2023, Ketchum and colleagues observed the most intense X-ray flare ever recorded from the galaxy NGC 1275. The phenomenon, which lasted less than 60 days, consisted of two bursts—each lasting five days—during which the X-ray luminosity of the active galactic nucleus doubled.

The flare was so intense that the research team investigated whether it was caused by a "fatal rupture event" (TDE); A phenomenon in which a star gets so close to a supermassive black hole that the massive gravity of the black hole tears the star apart due to tidal forces. These forces pull, compress, and tear the star apart—a process sometimes called "spaghettification"—and then the black hole swallows some of the resulting plasma.

However, the research team was able to reject this scenario; Ketchum suggested that the flare was likely caused by a sudden increase in the rate of accretion (absorption) of matter into the black hole, rather than the ingestion of a star.

Using data from the Swift Observatory, researchers determined the radius of the region of the active galactic nucleus from which radiation was emitted. Given the direct relationship between the size and mass of the black hole, this allowed them to estimate the mass of the black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 1275, concluding that its mass is between 100 million and one billion times the mass of the Sun.