UNAWE Space Scoop - A Rule-Breaking Supermassive Black Hole

https://spacescoop.org/en/scoops/2602/a-rule-breaking-supermassive-black-hole/

Astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole, or SMBH, that is breaking all the rules! Well, one rule anyway. It's called eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey, or eFEDS, J084222.9+001000. Whew! It is also called ID830, don't ask me why, so that's what I'll call it. Way easier!

 

Anyway…

Most galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their center. They grow by sucking down clouds of gas & dust nearby - like a powerful vacuum cleaner in space. As the black hole, uh, eats, the gas swirls inward and heats up the surroundings, making it 'glow' in all kinds of light. 

 

Sometimes astronomers see this as a bright flare in X-ray light, and sometimes as jets, glowing in radio light. There is a speed limit, of a sort, for how fast SMBHs can eat, called the Eddington limit. It's named after Sir Arthur Eddington who first proposed this natural limit to stellar luminosity.

 

If they eat too fast, the gas heats up and the energy released by the hot gas, lots of different kinds of light radiation, begins to push back on the incoming gas flowing in behind it, slowing things down. 

 

Kinda like a traffic jam.

 

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