This is a high-energy beam containing materials that this monstrous black hole “could not consume.”
According to Space, NASA’s small spacecraft IXPE, which operates as an ultra-sensitive X-ray probe, has detected the aforementioned black hole and its explosive activity.
It is Markarian 421, a supermassive black hole commonly referred to by astronomers as a “monstrous black hole”, lurking in the constellation Ursa Major.
A monstrous black hole is shooting a high-energy beam toward Earth – (Photo: NASA).
The direction of the high-energy beam is aimed directly at Earth, but there is no need for excessive worry, as our planet is located 400 million light-years away from the “monster,” far too distant for this beam to reach us.
This phenomenon forms a blazar, which can be understood as a small-sized quasar, something that appears bright like a star when viewed from Earth but is not actually a star.
It also provides us with a rare opportunity to detect black holes, as all black holes, unless they consume and eject the excess material they ingest, would be completely dark.
This chilling discovery is also expected to shed light on the extreme cosmic phenomena behind the black hole’s feeding sessions.
Surrounding Markarian 421 is a massive accretion disk, which regularly supplies the black hole with “food.”
However, the black hole cannot consume everything. The material it cannot digest will accumulate and then be expelled as a jet—a beam of high-energy particles traveling at nearly the speed of light.
The energy beam aimed at Earth also has a strange twisted structure resembling a DNA helix.
For amateur observers, IXPE has unveiled more mysteries about the twinkling objects we see every night in the sky: Distant stars are not always just stars. They can be planets, supernovae, or a “monster” in disguise like Markarian 421.
