Milky Way's Black Hole Found Grazing On Asteroids

Milky Way's Black Hole Found Grazing On Asteroids

ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be vaporizing and devouring asteroids, which could explain the frequent flares observed, according to astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

 

For several years Chandra has detected X-ray flares about once a day from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, or "Sgr A*" for short. The flares last a few hours with brightness ranging from a few times to nearly one hundred times that of the black hole's regular output. The flares also have been seen in infrared data from ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

"People have had doubts about whether asteroids could form at all in the harsh environment near a supermassive black hole," said Kastytis Zubovas of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the report appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "It's exciting because our study suggests that a huge number of them are needed to produce these flares."

Zubovas and his colleagues suggest there is a cloud around Sgr A* containing trillions of asteroids and comets, stripped from their parent stars. Asteroids passing within about 100 million miles of the black hole, roughly the distance between Earth and the sun, would be torn into pieces by the tidal forces from the black hole.

These fragments then would be vaporized by friction as they pass through the hot, thin gas flowing onto Sgr A*, similar to a meteor heating up and glowing as it falls through Earth's atmosphere. A flare is produced and the remains of the asteroid are swallowed eventually by the black hole.

"An asteroid's orbit can change if it ventures too close to a star or planet near Sgr A*," said co-author Sergei Nayakshin, also of the University of Leicester. "If it's thrown toward the black hole, it's doomed."

The authors estimate that it would take asteroids larger than about six miles in radius to generate the flares observed by Chandra. Meanwhile, Sgr A* also may be consuming smaller asteroids, but these would be difficult to spot because the flares they generate would be fainter.

These results reasonably agree with models estimating of how many asteroids are likely to be in this region, assuming that the number around stars near Earth is similar to the number surrounding stars near the center of the Milky Way.

"As a reality check, we worked out that a few trillion asteroids should have been removed by the black hole over the 10-billion-year lifetime of the galaxy," said co-author Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. "Only a small fraction of the total would have been consumed, so the supply of asteroids would hardly be depleted."

Planets thrown into orbits too close to Sgr A* also should be disrupted by tidal forces, although this would happen much less frequently than the disruption of asteroids, because planets are not as common. Such a scenario may have been responsible for a previous X-ray brightening of Sgr A* by about a factor of a million about a century ago. While this event happened many decades before X-ray telescopes existed, Chandra and other X-ray missions have seen evidence of an X-ray "light echo" reflecting off nearby clouds, providing a measure of the brightness and timing of the flare.

"This would be a sudden end to the planet's life, a much more dramatic fate than the planets in our solar system ever will experience," Zubovas said.

Very long observations of Sgr A* will be made with Chandra later in 2012 that will give valuable new information about the frequency and brightness of flares and should help to test the model proposed here to explain them. This work could improve understanding about the formation of asteroids and planets in the harsh environment of Sgr A*.

 

A new study provides a possible explanation of mysterious X-ray flares detected by Chandra over the period of several years. It suggests that there is a cloud around Sgr A* containing trillions of asteroids and comets, stripped from their parent stars. The flares occur when asteroids of six miles or larger in radius are consumed by the black hole. The panel on the left shows a very long Chandra observation of the region around the Sgr A*, while the three panels on the right are artist's impressions of the path that a doomed asteroid would take on its way to the black hole. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/F. Baganoff et al.; Illustrations: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)
 
 
 

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Comment by Maria De Wind on February 10, 2012 at 9:26am

@Marklar  If black-ssholes do not exist, then who is living in the white-house? Granted, he seems to have pulled his nationality  and authority out of thin air with no basis on legit documentation and whenever his actions are proven incorrect by constitutionalists, congress simply take away a few more of our rights to accommodate his whims instead of wondering why his actions fail to match his mandate....

As above so is below

Comment by theGuild on February 9, 2012 at 7:47pm
had a few events that took me over the horizon - and managed to return ..... but am still trying to calculate how i did it .

:)
Comment by Marklar on February 9, 2012 at 5:55pm

Sorry, but I just have to chime in here. IMO, black holes do not exist, nor does dark matter, or dark energy. All of these are based upon abstract mathematical constructs produced out of thin air with no basis in the observable physical laws of the universe. Whenever these mathematical models are proven incorrect the mathematicians simply move some numbers around to accomodate the new data instead of wondering why their abstract models failed to predict the new data. The ability to make and then verify predictions based upon a given theory is a scientific hallmark of good science. Instead the mathematicians that have taken over the field of theoretical physics have failed again and again being surprised by the observable data at every turn. This is what one would expect from bad science.

The plasma cosmology of the electrical universe theories have by comparison been extremely succesfull in predicting the newly observed data. This theoretical model is endorsed by the IEEE (The world's largest professional association for the advancement of technology), real scientist relying upon observable, repeatable, empirical science that produces real results in the real world. But what would they know, abstract number jugglers without the need to verify anything in the real world obviously know better right?

Comment by TommyD on February 9, 2012 at 1:36pm

Something's been nagging at my brain for some time concerning black holes...Do they emit energy in a frequency spectrum that we have yet to develop technology to detect and monitor? I understand the theory about the gravitational pull so great that not even light can escape(hence the name) but what forms of energy exists that we have yet to discover? Do black holes devour matter and then shoot it back out in this hypothetical spectrum of energy? Are black holes a type of galactic recycling bin?

Comment by TommyD on February 9, 2012 at 1:31pm

galactic recycling????

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