Scientists have discovered an unusual, mysterious “heartbeat” from a cosmic gas cloud.
The cloud – which is otherwise unremarkable – seems to “hit” along with the rhythm of a neighboring black hole, researchers say.
As such, they appear to be connected to each other, the researchers write in a new journal paper. But it is not clear how the gamma-ray “heartbeat” of the cloud can be connected to the black hole, which lies 100 light-years away.
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The research team found the heartbeat after searching for data from the Nermas Fermi gamma-ray space telescope for ten years. They looked at a system known as S 433, about 15,000 light-years from us, which includes a giant star that is about 30 times the mass of our sun like an enormous black hole.
Every 13 days, the black hole and the star revolved around each other. As they do so, the black hole sucks material from the giant star.
“This material collects in an accretion disk before it falls into the black hole, like water in the vortex above the drainage of a bathtub,” said Jian Li, one of the researchers on paper. “However, part of that case does not fall under the turn, but shoots out at high speed into two narrow jets in opposite directions above and below the rotating action disk.”
That accretion disk is not exactly in line with the trajectory of both objects. Instead, it swings over time like a spinning top that is not flat, and so the two jets spiral into space instead of shooting out in straight lines.
Those jets hover over a period of about 162 days. And that same rhythm is seen in the gamma-ray signal in the cloud, relatively far from those jets, which would otherwise be unremarkable – but appears to send an emission sent by the jets.
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Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust that stood three light-years high, bursting with gas jets of inverted shooting stars, was captured by Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010.
Nasa / ESA / STScI
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The first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012
Nasa / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
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Death of a star: This image from Nandra’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy
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Arrokoth, the farthest object ever explored, pictured here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth
Getty
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An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic matter
Nasa
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The first ever image of a black hole captured by the Event Horizon telescope as part of a global collaboration involving Nasa, released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole in the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole inhabits about 54 million light-years from Earth
Getty
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Pluto, as pictured by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft when it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
Nasa / APL / SwRI
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A coronal mass emission as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time Chandra has discovered this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
Nasa
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Dark, narrow, 100-meter-long stripes running on the surface of Mars were thought to be evidence of current flowing water. Since then it has been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand
Nasa / JPL / University of Arizona
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Morning Aurora: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photo of the International Space Station’s Aurora green lights in October 2015
Nasa / Scott Kelly
1/10
Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust that stood three light-years high, bursting with gas jets of inverted shooting stars, was captured by Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010.
Nasa / ESA / STScI
2/10
The first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012
Nasa / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
3/10
Death of a star: This image from Nandra’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy
Nasa
4/10
Arrokoth, the farthest object ever explored, pictured here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth
Getty
5/10
An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic matter
Nasa
6/10
The first ever image of a black hole captured by the Event Horizon telescope as part of a global collaboration involving Nasa, released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole in the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole inhabits about 54 million light-years from Earth
Getty
7/10
Pluto, as pictured by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft when it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
Nasa / APL / SwRI
8/10
A coronal mass emission as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time Chandra has discovered this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
Nasa
9/10
Dark, narrow, 100-meter-long stripes running on the surface of Mars were thought to be evidence of current flowing water. Since then it has been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand
Nasa / JPL / University of Arizona
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Morning Aurora: Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photo of the International Space Station’s Aurora green lights in October 2015
Nasa / Scott Kelly
“Finding such an untimely connection via timing, about 100 light-years away from the micro-quasar, not even along the direction of the jets is as unexpected as it is amazing,” Li says. “But how the black hole can support the heartbeat of the gas cloud is unclear to us.”
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