Great shots from space:
institute of technology researchers In Massachusetts, the echo of a black hole was discovered.
In a video, researchers share sounds from space, which sound like they’re from an animated movie.
These are recordings that show what black holes engulfing nearby stars look like.
These stars are also known in science as “X-ray binaries” when energy is released in the form of X-rays.
X-ray binaries are systems with a star orbiting and sometimes “eaten” by a black hole.
MIT scientists have now looked for echoes from nearby stars to analyze and thus reconstruct the black hole’s environment.
Using an automated search tool, the researchers searched satellite data for signals of such echoes.
In this research, they discovered eight new binary black holes that have echoes. To date, only two such systems are known.
Together with educators and musicologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they converted the emission of X-ray echoes into sound waves that we can hear, which can be heard in the video.
“We are just beginning to use these echoes of light to reconstruct environments closest to the black hole”Irene Kara, Assistant Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
But what exactly are black holes and where does the noise come from?
Millions of black holes are scattered across the Milky Way.
These are dark because both matter and light cannot escape through the holes.
However, it is different when the black hole feeds itself. As the MIT researchers explain, bursts of X-ray light occur when a black hole sucks gas and dust from a star orbiting it. Incoming gas reflects off these eruptions, briefly illuminating the crater.
Astronomers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are trying to use X-ray echoes to reconstruct the immediate vicinity of a black hole.
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