The first 3D simulation of the black hole formation reveals why the mysterious gamma-ray explosion appears blurred and suggests that these mysterious events may be far more unusual than astronomers thought.
Gamma-ray radiation is the brightest and most powerful light source in the universe. It was first discovered in 1967 when a blinding light bulb was produced when giant stars fell into black holes, exploding jets of material entering the atmosphere at about light speed.
At present, satellites detect a single gamma-ray explosion somewhere in the universe every day. However, astronomers estimate that about 500 a day could appear in the universe without our knowledge, and new research suggests that the actual number may be ten times less than that.
The study, conducted by a team of astronomers at Northwestern University, compared the details of the 3D birth of black holes with jets empowered by falling stars for the first time. Imitation has shown that as a giant star falls, a black hole begins to form in its heart, surrounded by a disk of falling objects. In some cases, this key can be accelerated near a black hole into a plane that avoids the gravitation of the black hole. All this happens while a dying star envelope still surrounds the emerging black hole.
“Previous research has tried to understand how [jets] work, but those studies were limited in their ability to integrate and required a lot of speculation,” Ore Gottlieb, an astronomer at Northwestern University and lead author of the new study, said in a statement. opens in a new tab). “We could trace the whole plane’s appearance from scratch – from its birth in the black hole – without taking anything concerning the aircraft’s structure. We followed the jet from the black hole to the emission point and found.
According to researchers, the plane must be strong enough to pierce a falling star envelope and fly into space to trigger a gamma-ray explosion.
“The plane produces [gamma-ray explosion] when it reaches a star size about 30 times – or a million times larger than a black hole,” Gottlieb said. “In other words, if a black hole is the size of a sea ball, the plane needs to be extended across the whole of France before it can produce gamma-ray explosions.”
The simulation revealed for the first time that as an object from a rolling star falls on a growth disk around a black hole, it causes the disk to tilt and rotate like a spinning top. This tilt affects the trajectory of the jet, which, unlike previous guesses, does not follow a straight line. This jet stagnation explains one of the great mysteries of gamma-ray explosion – it’s blinking.
