Something Escaped a Black Hole at Nearly the Speed of Light, and NASA Recorded the Event

The black hole in MAXI J1820+070 shot gas at over 80% of the speed of light, one of the fastest ejections ever observed from a stellar-mass black hole.

TL;DR

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has recorded a stellar-mass black hole ejecting gas at speeds exceeding 80% of the speed of light in a system called MAXI J1820+070, located 10,000 light-years away. The illusion of superluminal motion made the jets appear faster than the speed of light from Earth’s view, with one jet seeming to move at 160% light speed. By studying these jets, scientists hope to better understand how black holes interact with their environment. These events were tracked in X-rays and radio wavelengths, with jets producing sonic booms as they collide with nearby material in space.

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A black hole ejecting gas at nearly the speed of light has been recorded on video by a space telescope. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captured a burst from a black hole and its companion star in a binary system known as MAXI J1820+070. Located 10,000 light-years from Earth, this system is relatively close in cosmic terms, allowing for detailed analysis.

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have caught a stellar-mass black hole hurling hot material into space at close to the speed of light.  (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Université de Paris/M. Espinasse et al.; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS)

As the companion star, which has about half the sun’s mass, orbits the black hole, the intense gravity of the stellar-mass black hole—about eight times the mass of the sun—pulls material from the star into an accretion disk, forming a glowing sphere of gas that emits strong X-rays. Some of this gas is drawn into the black hole, while some is expelled in two jets shooting in opposite directions.

This explosion was one of the fastest observed from a stellar-mass black hole in X-rays, ejecting around 400 million billion pounds (181 million billion kilograms) of material in the jets.

“This mass is similar to what could accumulate on the black hole’s disk in just a few hours, equivalent to a thousand Halley’s Comets or 500 million times the mass of the Empire State Building,” NASA explained in a statement.

The black hole’s activity was recorded by Chandra in four observation sessions in November 2018, and three more in 2019 (February, May, and June). From Earth’s view, the jets seem to move at extraordinary speeds due to an optical illusion.

Initially, the northern jet appears to be traveling at 60% the speed of light, while the southern jet seems to be moving at an impossible 160% of light speed. NASA attributes this to a phenomenon called “superluminal motion.” According to NASA, this happens “when an object moves towards us at nearly the speed of light, along a path close to our line of sight.”

The agency further clarified, “The object moves nearly as fast toward us as the light it emits, creating the illusion that the jet’s speed exceeds the speed of light. For MAXI J1820+070, the southern jet is directed towards us and the northern jet away from us, making the southern jet appear faster. However, the real speed of the particles in both jets is over 80% of the speed of light.”

Studying black hole binary systems like MAXI J1820+070 may provide more insights into how jets form and interact with their environments, NASA stated.

This artist’s illustration shows a black hole pulling material away from a closely orbiting companion star. (Image credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)

The black hole’s activity was also detected in radio wavelengths by a research team led by Joe Bright from the University of Oxford in the UK. Bright’s team also noted the superluminal motion based solely on radio data, NASA said. Chandra’s contribution extended the tracking duration of the jets and provided more details from X-ray observations, including that the jets slow down as they move away from the black hole.

“Most of the energy in the jets doesn’t get converted into radiation but is released when the jets’ particles interact with nearby material,” NASA said. “These interactions likely cause the jets’ deceleration. When the jets hit surrounding material in interstellar space, shock waves—similar to sonic booms from supersonic aircraft—occur. This process produces particle energies higher than those in the Large Hadron Collider.”

A paper based on the research was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The research was led by Mathilde Espinasse, who has affiliations at the University of Paris-Saclay, the University of Paris Diderot and the University of Paris. 

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