Scientists Uncover Surprising Ultrap-hot Ring Around Black Hole Using Innovative ‘Double Zoom’ Technique

Black holes are mysterious and hard to see, but we’ve now directly measured a hot gas halo, or “corona,” around one of them for the first time. This black hole, named RX J1131, is located about 6 billion light-years away and spins at over half the speed of light. While the black hole itself is invisible, it devours nearby gas and dust, heating it to millions of degrees and lighting up as a quasar, one of the brightest objects in the universe. This corona stretches roughly 50 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

A unique cosmic arrangement allowed scientists to make this groundbreaking measurement. A massive galaxy, located about 4 billion light-years away, acted as a magnifying glass, making RX J1131’s surroundings clearer. Matus Rybak, a senior researcher from Leiden University, described this as a new method to look closely at black holes.

These findings, soon to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, open up new ways to examine the extreme environments surrounding black holes. Rybak noted, “We found a new way to look at what’s happening very close to the black hole.”

The galaxy’s gravity magnified RX J1131’s light, producing four distinct images of the quasar, a process known as strong gravitational lensing. When Rybak’s team reanalyzed old data, they noticed flickers in brightness of these images that shouldn’t have occurred if they were all caused by the black hole. This led to the discovery of marcrolensing, where individual stars briefly magnified different parts of the quasar’s corona, causing the variations they observed.

“We saw flickering in the data that we could not explain in any other way,” Rybak said. Analyzing these fluctuations allowed the team to measure the size of the corona directly, revealing more about this cosmic structure.

Understanding the corona could also shed light on the magnetic fields around black holes, which control how much gas they feed on and expel. Past research indicates that these magnetic fields influence black hole growth. Although measuring these fields directly is tough, scientists theorize a connection between the corona’s emissions and magnetic field strength.

Rybak remarked, “Understanding how these black holes grow is the main potential here.” Previously, it was thought that light from the corona was mostly static. However, this study showed otherwise, marking a significant shift in understanding celestial phenomena.

Looking ahead, the team plans to gather more data using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to further investigate these findings. However, recently proposed budget cuts to Chandra have raised concerns in the scientific community about the future of such observations.

Future discoveries may also come from the ALMA telescope, which is extending its capabilities to capture wavelengths where black holes shine brightest. Additionally, the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory, expected to reveal thousands of lensed quasars, will improve the precision of optical flickering studies.

As telescope technology advances, there’s so much more to learn about these fascinating cosmic giants. “The exciting part is the things we don’t know about yet,” Rybak shared. New measurements of black holes not only expand our knowledge but also encourage curiosity about the universe’s many secrets.

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