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X-ray flashes from a nearby supermassive black hole accelerate mysteriously X-ray flashes from a nearby supermassive black hole accelerate mysteriously Their source could be the core of a dead star that's teetering at the black hole's edge, MIT astronomers report. Jennifer Chu | MIT News Publication Date: January 13, 2025 Press Inquiries Press Contact: Abby Abazorius Email: abbya@mit.edu Phone: 617-253-2709 MIT News Office Media Download Energy swirls around a black hole, and a white dwarf, like a sphere, trails matter. Blue energy goes toward the center of the black hole. | Download Image Caption: In this artist's rendering, a stream of matter trails a white dwarf orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927's supermassive black hole. Credits: Credit: Aurore Simonnet / Sonoma State University Energy swirls around a black hole, and a white dwarf, like a sphere, trails matter. Blue energy goes toward the center of the black hole. | Download Image Caption: Astronomers developed this scenario to explain the evolution of rapid X-ray oscillations detected by ESA's (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton satellite. ESA's LISA mission, due to launch in the next decade, should be able to confirm the presence of an orbiting white dwarf by detecting the gravitational waves it produced. Credits: Credit: Aurore Simonnet / Sonoma State University Against a blue background, yellow-pinkish blobs emerge as the date changes in the corner from June 2023 to May 2024. The blobs are larger than 1 light year. | Download Image Caption: Radio images of 1ES 1927+654 reveal emerging structures that appear to be jets of plasma erupting from both sides of the galaxy's central black hole following a strong radio flare. The first image, taken in June 2023, shows no sign of the jet, likely because hot gas screened it from view. Then, starting in February 2024, the features emerge and expand away from the galaxy's center, covering a total distance of about half a light-year as measured from the center of each structure. Credits: Credit: NRAO/Meyer at al. 2025 *Terms of Use: Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license. You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT." Close Energy swirls around a black hole, and a white dwarf, like a sphere, trails matter. Blue energy goes toward the center of the black hole. Caption: In this artist's rendering, a stream of matter trails a white dwarf orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927's supermassive black hole. Credits: Credit: Aurore Simonnet / Sonoma State University Energy swirls around a black hole, and a white dwarf, like a sphere, trails matter. Blue energy goes toward the center of the black hole. Caption: Astronomers developed this scenario to explain the evolution of rapid X-ray oscillations detected by ESA's (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton satellite. ESA's LISA mission, due to launch in the next decade, should be able to confirm the presence of an orbiting white dwarf by detecting the gravitational waves it produced. Credits: Credit: Aurore Simonnet / Sonoma State University Previous image Next image One supermassive black hole has kept astronomers glued to their scopes for the last several years. First came a surprise disappearance, and now, a precarious spinning act. The black hole in question is 1ES 1927+654, which is about as massive as a million suns and sits in a galaxy that is 270 million light-years away. In 2018, astronomers at MIT and elsewhere observed that the black hole's corona -- a cloud of whirling, white-hot plasma -- suddenly disappeared, before reassembling months later. The brief though dramatic shut-off was a first in black hole astronomy. Members of the MIT team have now caught the same black hole exhibiting more unprecedented behavior. The astronomers have detected flashes of X-rays coming from the black hole at a steadily increasing clip. Over a period of two years, the flashes, at millihertz frequencies, increased from every 18 minutes to every seven minutes. This dramatic speed-up in X-rays has not been seen from a black hole until now. The researchers explored a number of scenarios for what might explain the flashes. They believe the most likely culprit is a spinning white dwarf -- an extremely compact core of a dead star that is orbiting around the black hole and getting precariously closer to its event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can escape the black hole's gravitational pull. If this is the case, the white dwarf must be pulling off an impressive balancing act, as it could be coming right up to the black hole's edge without actually falling in. "This would be the closest thing we know of around any black hole," says Megan Masterson, a graduate student in physics at MIT, who co-led the discovery. "This tells us that objects like white dwarfs may be able to live very close to an event horizon for a relatively extended period of time." The researchers present their findings today at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. If a white dwarf is at the root of the black hole's mysterious flashing, it would also give off gravitational waves, in a range that would be detectable by next-generation observatories such as the European Space Agency's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). "These new detectors are designed to detect oscillations on the scale of minutes, so this black hole system is in that sweet spot," says co-author Erin Kara, associate professor of physics at MIT. The study's other co-authors include MIT Kavli members Christos Panagiotou, Joheen Chakraborty, Kevin Burdge, Riccardo Arcodia, Ronald Remillard, and Jingyi Wang, along with collaborators from multiple other institutions. Nothing normal Kara and Masterson were part of the team that observed 1ES 1927+654 in 2018, as the black hole's corona went dark, then slowly rebuilt itself over time. For a while, the newly reformed corona -- a cloud of highly energetic plasma and X-rays -- was the brightest X-ray-emitting object in the sky. "It was still extremely bright, though it wasn't doing anything new for a couple years and was kind of gurgling along. But we felt we had to keep monitoring it because it was so beautiful," Kara says. "Then we noticed something that has never really been seen before." In 2022, the team looked through observations of the black hole taken by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, a space-based observatory that detects and measures X-ray emissions from black holes, neutron stars, galactic clusters, and other extreme cosmic sources. They noticed that X-rays from the black hole appeared to pulse with increasing frequency. Such "quasi-periodic oscillations" have only been observed in a handful of other supermassive black holes, where X-ray flashes appear with regular frequency. Against a blue background, yellow-pinkish blobs emerge as the date changes in the corner from June 2023 to May 2024. The blobs are larger than 1 light year. Radio images of 1ES 1927+654 reveal emerging structures that appear to be jets of plasma erupting from both sides of the galaxy's central black hole following a strong radio flare. The first image, taken in June 2023, shows no sign of the jet, likely because hot gas screened it from view. Then, starting in February 2024, the features emerge and expand away from the galaxy's center, covering a total distance of about half a light-year as measured from the center of each structure. Credit: NRAO/Meyer at al. 2025 Previous item Next item In the case of 1ES 1927+654, the flickering seemed to steadily ramp up, from every 18 minutes to every seven minutes over the span of two years. "We've never seen this dramatic variability in the rate at which it's flashing," Masterson says. "This looked absolutely nothing like a normal supermassive black hole." The fact that the flashing was detected in the X-ray band points to the strong possibility that the source is somewhere very close to the black hole. The innermost regions of a black hole are extremely high-energy environments, where X-rays are produced by fast-moving, hot plasma. X-rays are less likely to be seen at farther distances, where gas can circle more slowly in an accretion disk. The cooler environment of the disk can emit optical and ultraviolet light, but rarely gives off X-rays. "Seeing something in the X-rays is already telling you you're pretty close to the black hole," Kara says. "When you see variability on the timescale of minutes, that's close to the event horizon, and the first thing your mind goes to is circular motion, and whether something could be orbiting around the black hole." X-ray kick-up Whatever was producing the X-ray flashes was doing so at an extremely close distance from the black hole, which the researchers estimate to be within a few million miles of the event horizon. Masterson and Kara explored models for various astrophysical phenomena that could explain the X-ray patterns that they observed, including a possibility relating to the black hole's corona. "One idea is that this corona is oscillating, maybe blobbing back and forth, and if it starts to shrink, those oscillations get faster as the scales get smaller," Masterson says. "But we're in the very early stages of understanding coronal oscillations." Another promising scenario, and one that scientists have a better grasp on in terms of the physics involved, has to do with a daredevil of a white dwarf. According to their modeling, the researchers estimate the white dwarf could have been about one-tenth the mass of the sun. In contrast, the supermassive black hole itself is on the order of 1 million solar masses. When any object gets this close to a supermassive black hole, gravitational waves are expected to be emitted, dragging the object closer to the black hole. As it circles closer, the white dwarf moves at a faster rate, which can explain the increasing frequency of X-ray oscillations that the team observed. The white dwarf is practically at the precipice of no return and is estimated to be just a few million miles from the event horizon. However, the researchers predict that the star will not fall in. While the black hole's gravity may pull the white dwarf inward, the star is also shedding part of its outer layer into the black hole. This shedding acts as a small kick-back, such that the white dwarf -- an incredibly compact object itself -- can resist crossing the black hole's boundary. "Because white dwarfs are small and compact, they're very difficult to shred apart, so they can be very close to a black hole," Kara says. "If this scenario is correct, this white dwarf is right at the turn around point, and we may see it get further away." The team plans to continue observing the system, with existing and future telescopes, to better understand the extreme physics at work in a black hole's innermost environments. They are particularly excited to study the system once the space-based gravitational-wave detector LISA launches -- currently planned for the mid 2030s -- as the gravitational waves that the system should give off will be in a sweet spot that LISA can clearly detect. "The one thing I've learned with this source is to never stop looking at it because it will probably teach us something new," Masterson says. "The next step is just to keep our eyes open." Share this news article on: * X * Facebook * LinkedIn * Reddit * Print Press Mentions Mashable MIT astronomers have witnessed flashes of X-rays shooting out of a black hole and believe that a dead star, or white dwarf, passing close by the black hole could be causing the eruptions, reports Mark Kaufman for Mashable. "The astronomers ran simulations of what could drive these unusual bursts of energy," writes Kaufman. "The most plausible outcome is this brazen white dwarf (the spent core of a sun-like star), which is about one-tenth the mass of our sun. It's shedding its dense, outer layer and triggering these pulses of X-rays." Full story via Mashable - Previous item Next item Related Links * Erin Kara * Megan Masterson * MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research * Department of Physics * School of Science Related Topics * Astronomy and astrophysics * Black holes * Space * Physics * Research * Satellites * Kavli Institute * School of Science Related Articles Illustration of the proposed AXIS Deep Extragalacitc Survey, a conical satellite with an octagonal heat shield and two solar panels, against a black star field AXIS mission selected as NASA Astrophysics Probe competition finalist Eight inset photos of black holes on starry background. Astronomers spot 18 black holes gobbling up nearby stars A dynamic rendering shows, on the left, the edge of a gigantic, yellow spherical star. A tiny red planet is in the middle and has skimmed the star. Rays of white light and blue energy radiate out from their touch. 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