NASA -- The Hubble, a NASA space explorer, has recently discovered something odd. It is a material disc that is circling around a black hole, and it looks like it is starving. The black hole was identified to be the one located at the center of a spiral galaxy NGC 3147. It has a distance of 130 million light-years away from Earth.
Astronomers were surprised to find that a disc was forming around a supermassive black hole as such for its size is the kind that would already be dying. Their location and the size has made it even more difficult for them to capture gas and dust with their gravity to keep them fed regularly. However, the materials that were seen around this black hole looked like the ones that are seen circling around active galaxies.
This phenomenon is what led scientists to create a computer model to investigate what happens when active galaxies give off relatively little light. There predicted that a disc of materials will form around it, especially when there are a lot of gas present in the area. This process emits a lot of light a what seems like a quasar.
"The type of disc that we saw around the supermassive black hole is a form of quasar. It is a scaled-down quasar that nobody expected to exist," says Stefano Bianchi, the primary author of the study. He is a researcher and professor from the Universita Degli Studi Roma Tre in Italy. 'It's the same kind of disk that forms around objects in space that are 1,000 to 100,000 times more luminous. The predictions made around current models for active yet faint galaxies have clearly failed."
Another interesting idea explored by this disc around the supermassive black hole is the theory of relativity. The disc rests within the gravity field of the black hole, which basically is affected by the strong gravitational forces that lead to the manipulation of the light waves it has given off.
"This is a rather intriguing peek at the disc that has formed around a black hole. The proximity is so close that the intensity of the gravitational pull are already affecting the photons of light that become visible to us," Bianchi explained. "We have never seen anything that affects both special and general relativity in visible light with so much clarity," said Marco Chiaberge in a statement. He is the second author of the study.
To be able to look closely into the materials that are part of the disc, the team used the Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. It is a combination of a spectrograph and a camera, which helps scientists by splitting the light into two different wavelengths to help gather more precise information. It aids in the measurement of the speed and temperature of the object.
