A cosmic mystery surrounding a black hole some 270 million light-years from the Milky Way is deepening.
For years, astronomers have been perplexed by this particular supermassive black hole, a behemoth as large as a million suns in a distant galaxy. In 2018, astronomers observed that the black hole’s corona – a cloud of whirling, white-hot plasma – suddenly disappeared before reassembling months later.
Now, the black hole has once again demonstrated strange features that teams of astronomers around the world have professed to never before seeing: Plasma jets moving at nearly one-third the speed of light, and rapid X-ray flashes from the black hole's edge steadily increasing in frequency.
But researchers believe they have identified a likely culprit for the unusual behavior.
It's believed that a dead stellar remnant, or white dwarf, could be spinning precariously on the edge of the black hole, causing the explosions of high-energy light.
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