14 DAY TRIAL // Astronomers identified a black hole in space that looks remarkably similar to the Eye of Sauron, as seen in the Lord of the Rings. They say that this cosmic structure could teach them a thing or two about the evolution of black holes, and also about the way they interact with their surroundings.
The structure is located about 43 million light years away, which is relatively close in astronomical terms. It can bee seen at the core of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151, Space reports.
The image attached to this article is the latest and most detailed view of the object. It was produced by stitching together a number of composite images, collected by several telescopes from different vantage points.
This combination reveals amazing details of the black hole, that have never been seen before in other studies. Interestingly, astrophysicists identified X-ray emissions coming from the structure's core.
According to theory, this means that, at one point, the supermassive black hole had an outburst, during which it ferociously spewed out matter and various types radiation from its polar regions.
Experts used the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory to capture X-rays emanating from the object, seen here in blue. The Canary Islands-based Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (JKT) was used to collect visible-light wavelength data, and augment Chandra's observations.
The team also used the Very Large Array (VLA) observatory, in New Mexico, to detect the light signature of neutral hydrogen gas that may exist around the structure. These data are shown in red.
Investigators say that there are two possible scenarios for what caused the X-ray emissions.
It could be, for example, that the black holes was accreting matter at very high rates more than 25,000 years ago, and that the material falling through the event horizon was producing a lot of radiations.
These radiations may have grown to be so bright, that they literally stripped electrons of atoms in all gas accumulations they encountered in their paths. Much later, as the removed electrons were beginning to reattach themselves to the then-ionized atoms, massive amounts of X-rays were produced.
In the second scenario, a massive outbound flow of gas was produced from the black hole's accretion disk. This event may have been caused by material falling into the black hole at high rates.
As the flow moved away from its point of origin, it may have heated the gas clouds around the black hole so much, that they began producing X-rays.
What's interesting about these two theories is that they were both elaborated to address what happened to a black hole that continues to grow even today. The NGC 4151-based structure is one of the few dark behemoths in the area around our galaxy to be still in their growth phase.