Black holes are some of
the strangest objects in space. These balls of dense matter are scattered throughout the Milky Way and have gravitational fields so powerful
Now astronomers have discovered
something about these cosmic enigmas that’s upended our understanding of them.
An international team of
astrophysicists found that black holes can flip the direction of their magnetic fields.
When a black hole sucks in gas &
dust from galaxies around it, these materials swirl and fall into it and gather to form a rotating disk that generates radiation
Because space gas and dust also
carry magnetic charges, they give the disks a magnetic field that wraps around the black hole in a particular direction, much like how the magnetic fields around Earth point north.
In late 2017, astronomers noticed
a specific black hole, dubbed 1ES 1927+654, had grown super bright, peaking and emitting more visible and much more ultraviolet light by May 2018.
your X-rays will also rise,” Nicolas Scepi, the new study’s co-author and a postdoctoral researcher at JILA
“Normally, if the ultraviolet rises