Nearly six decades after astronomers first saw a particular pattern of X-rays rising and falling during a solar flare, that same signature has appeared around a supermassive black hole in the galaxy NGC 3783. A team at the Technion in Haifa, working with collaborators across several countries, reads it as a sign that the magnetic tangling and sudden release of energy which storm the Sun may also be at work in the furious glowing gas that surrounds a black hole. It is a single object and a single observation, so the finding is a promising thread rather than a settled law, but it suggests that t
Technion Team Links Black Hole Eruptions to Solar Storm Physics via Magnetic Reconnection
A pattern first seen in sunlight in 1968 has turned up near a black hole.
Mark
Why does a 1968 solar observation matter for a black hole today?
Mimi
Because the Neupert effect is a fingerprint. On the Sun it shows a relationship between different kinds of X-ray emission during a flare, and it signals magnetic reconnection. Finding it near a black hole in NGC 3783 suggests the same process is at work.
Mark
And the outflow?
Mimi
The team saw an ultrafast outflow of material that resembles a coronal mass ejection. On the Sun, a flare and an ejected cloud go together, so seeing both near the black hole strengthens the comparison.
Luke
Let's be careful about the strength, though. This is one black hole, one galaxy.
Mimi
True. The reporting describes it as the first observational evidence, not a survey.
Luke
And the outflow only resembles a solar ejection. That's the researchers' comparison, not proof the two are the same thing.
Mark
So what's actually established?
Luke
That the team reports the Neupert pattern in XRISM and XMM-Newton data and interprets it as reconnection. Independent confirmation isn't described in the source.
Mimi
Which is why the natural next step is looking for the same signature in other active black holes.
Mark
Who did the work?
Mimi
Gal Vardi, a doctoral student, led it under Prof. Ehud Behar, with partners in Japan, Europe and the United States.
Le Pouls
- A pattern first spotted on the Sun in 1968 has surfaced in X-ray data from a black hole, and researchers are racing to see whether it holds up.
- Violent eruptions in the superheated gas around a supermassive black hole appear to be driven by magnetic reconnection, the same process behind solar storms.
- An ultrafast outflow from the black hole's surroundings mirrors the coronal mass ejections that hurl clouds of charged particles off the Sun.
- The Technion team, drawing on XRISM and XMM-Newton data, has framed the result as the first observational evidence of such a flare near an active black hole.
- The finding rests on one object in galaxy NGC 3783, so the next step is checking whether other active black holes display the same signature.
Nearly six decades after astronomers first saw a particular pattern of X-rays rising and falling during a solar flare, that same signature has appeared around a supermassive black hole in the galaxy NGC 3783. A team at the Technion in Haifa, working with collaborators across several countries, reads it as a sign that the magnetic tangling and sudden release of energy which storm the Sun may also be at work in the furious glowing gas that surrounds a black hole. It is a single object and a single observation, so the finding is a promising thread rather than a settled law, but it suggests that the physics of our nearest star and the physics of the most extreme objects in the cosmos may share a common grammar.
A signature first noticed in sunlight in 1968 has now turned up in X-rays from a supermassive black hole. Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology report it in the galaxy NGC 3783, and they say it points to the same magnetic process that drives storms on the Sun.
The work, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by Gal Vardi, a doctoral student in the Technion's Faculty of Physics, under Prof. Ehud Behar, with collaborators from Japan, Europe and the United States. Using observations from the XRISM space telescope and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, the team examined the black hole at the galaxy's center.
On the Sun, a storm occurs when magnetic field lines break and rejoin, releasing stored energy as radiation and sometimes as enormous clouds of charged particles. Scientists have long suspected a similar process could fuel eruptions in the hot coronae around black holes, but direct evidence has been scarce.
The team found the Neupert effect, a relationship between different X-ray emissions during a flare that serves as a marker of magnetic reconnection. It had never been detected near a black hole. The data also revealed an ultrafast outflow resembling solar coronal mass ejections. Together, the researchers describe these as the first observational evidence of a magnetic reconnection flare in the corona of an active supermassive black hole.
If confirmed, the result would suggest the same basic physics operates on objects millions of times the Sun's mass. Since it comes from a single object, the next test is whether other active black holes show the same pattern.
A pattern first noticed in sunlight in 1968 has now turned up in X-rays from a supermassive black hole. Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology report that signature in the galaxy NGC 3783, and they say it points to the same magnetic process that drives storms on the Sun.
The findings appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The work was led by Gal Vardi, a doctoral student in the Technion's Faculty of Physics, under the supervision of Prof. Ehud Behar. Collaborators from Japan, Europe and the United States took part.
Start with the Sun. A solar storm happens when energy stored in the Sun's magnetic fields is suddenly released. The result is a burst of radiation and, in some cases, an enormous cloud of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection. Those clouds can cross the solar system, disrupt satellite communications and put astronauts at risk.
The mechanism behind them is magnetic reconnection. Magnetic field lines break and join up again, and the stored energy comes out. Scientists have long suspected that something similar could explain violent eruptions in the extremely hot regions surrounding black holes, which are also called coronae. Until now, observational evidence for it has been limited.
To look for it, the Technion team studied X-ray emissions from the black hole at the center of NGC 3783. They used observations from the XRISM space telescope and from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope.
What they found was the Neupert effect, first observed on the Sun in 1968. It describes a relationship between different types of X-ray emissions during a flare, and it is taken as evidence that magnetic reconnection is releasing the energy. It had never before been detected near a black hole.
The data also showed an ultrafast outflow of material from the region around the black hole. The researchers note that it resembles the coronal mass ejections seen in solar eruptions. Taken together, the two findings are described as the first observational evidence of a magnetic reconnection flare in the corona of an active supermassive black hole.
The implication is that the same basic physics can operate near black holes millions of times more massive than the Sun, despite the vast differences in scale and surroundings. The result comes from a single object, so the next test is whether other active black holes show the same pattern.
Citations marquantes
The findings provide the first observational evidence of a magnetic reconnection flare in the corona of an active supermassive black hole.— Technion research team, as reported by Ynetnews
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