Distant Black Hole Wakes Up To Grab A Light Snack
Black Hole Snack A normally quiet black hole woke up to snack on a super-Jupiter, seen in this screengrab from a computer simulation. ESALater this year, the black hole in our own galaxy will do the same, munching on a passing gas cloud. Astronomers have spotted a black hole wake up from a decades-long nap to munch on a small passing object, maybe a brown dwarf or a super-Jupiter. For astronomers, it's a preview of a similar feeding event that will happen later this year in our own galaxy. The black hole in this new example is in the galaxy NGC 4845, located 47 million light years away. It's about 300,000 solar masses, so a decent-sized black hole. Astronomers weren't even looking for it--they were using the European Space Agency's Integral satellite to look at a different galaxy, and noticed a bright X-ray flare coming from this one, which is normally pretty...