Artist’s impression of a black gap in motion.
DESY, Science Communication Lab
We might should rethink the concept that black holes can generate elementary particles.
A brand new research counteracts earlier analysis suggesting {that a} neutrino was generated by a supermassive black gap in April 2019, in an occasion generally known as AT2019dsg wherein the black gap was consuming a star. Whereas earlier research confirmed the neutrino got here from the identical space of the sky as AT2019dsg, the situation could also be coincidental as the brand new work suggests the black gap was not practically energetic sufficient (by an order of magnitude) to supply the neutrino.
Neutrinos are subatomic particles that don’t have any electrical cost and a particularly small mass. They’re essential to physicists as a result of neutrinos are ample, permitting us to make use of them as a proxy to check every thing from supernovas (star explosions) to the evolution of particles.
Whereas black holes are recognized for vacuuming up issues that get too shut, the analogy is just not excellent. “When there’s an excessive amount of materials, black holes cannot eat all of it easily directly,” research co-author Kate Alexander, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern College, stated in an announcement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Heart for Astrophysics. “A few of the fuel will get spewed again out throughout this course of — like when infants eat, a few of the meals finally ends up on the ground or the partitions.”
Workforce members used two highly effective radio telescopes, Very Giant Array in New Mexico and Atacama Giant Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, to look at AT2019dsg. The vitality produced was immense, equal in simply 200 days to what the solar would ship out in 30 million years.
However calculations from the staff signifies a neutrino would want a supply roughly 1,000 occasions as energetic as what was noticed at AT2019dsg. Or as Alexander put it, “As a substitute of a strong firehose, we see a smooth wind.”
The staff, nonetheless, plans follow-up observations of AT2019dsg to higher perceive the outflow, and likewise to do research of different tidal disruption occasions (the occasion seen in AT2019dsg). Whereas neutrinos have by no means been related to such occasions earlier than, and the brand new research casts doubt on any affiliation, it can take much more work earlier than we will make proclamations for certain.
A research based mostly on the analysis was revealed in The Astrophysical Journal. The lead writer was Yvette Cendes, a postdoctoral fellow on the Heart for Astrophysics.
