translated from Spanish: They detect a cloud of cosmic gas beating at the same rate as a nearby black hole

Photograph/SINC
World.- A team led by scientists from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, has detected a mysterious gamma ray pulse from a cosmic gas cloud. The cloud, without any extraordinary features and located in the constellation of the Eagle, in the Milky Way, beats at the same rate as a nearby black hole, indicating a connection between the two.
The finding, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, sheds light on how cosmic rays occur and propagated near microquares, as the observed black hole, separated 100 light-years from the cosmic gas cloud, is found in one of these integrated binary systems comprising a compact object and an accompanying star. These microquares, small and local brothers from the distant quasars, launch into the interstellar environment that surrounds them powerful winds and jets of matter from a neighboring star.
The cloud beats at the same rate as a nearby black hole, indicating a connection between the two
“The observed time signal provides an unequivocal connection between the micro-naphsar and the gas cloud, separated by about 100 light-years. This fact is as surprising as it is intriguing and opens questions about how the black hole feeds the heartbeat of the cloud,” says Diego F. Torres, ICREA researcher at the Institut d’Estudis Espacial de Catalunya (IEEC) at ICE-CSIC.
Swaying jets
Researchers have analyzed more than ten years of observations conducted using NASA’s Gamma Fermi Space Ray Telescope. The system observed in this study, called SS 433, is about 15,000 light-years away. It consists of a giant star with about 30 times the mass of our Sun (solar mass) and a black hole with approximately 10 to 20 solar masses.
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The two objects are orbiting each other, while the black hole absorbs matter from the giant star. The SS 433 is one of the most famous compact binary systems known, due to observable jets that swing and, although studied for decades, it still surprises researchers.
“This giant star material accumulates on a disc around the black hole before falling into it like water in the swirl of a bathtub drain,” explains DESY researcher Jian Li. “However, some of that matter does not fall down the drain, but is fired at high speed in two narrow jets in opposite directions above and below the rotating disc,” he says.
The two objects are orbiting each other, while the black hole absorbs matter from the giant star
“The grinding disc is not exactly on the plane of the orbit of the two objects,” Li adds, “but swings like a top that has been positioned tilted on a table. As a result, the two jets spiral into the surrounding space, rather than simply forming a straight line.”
The swaying of the black hole jets performs a periodic movement that lasts approximately 162 days. High-speed particles and ultra-strong magnetic fields of the jet produce X-rays and gamma rays, the latter having been observed by the team. A meticulous analysis revealed a gamma-ray signal with the same period from an ordinary gas cloud located relatively far from the microquares jets. The pulsation rates of this gas cloud indicate that the gamma-ray signal emission is governed by the micro-acoustic.
One explanation the team has explored is based on the impact of rapid protons produced at the ends of the jets, or near the black hole, which are injected into the cloud and hit the gas particles, producing gamma rays. Protons could also come from a rapid particle ejection from the edge of the atcreation disc. Each time this flow of particles hits the gas cloud, it lights up when it produces gamma rays, explaining its strange pulse.
“The flow of matter from the disk could be as energetically as powerful as that of the microquares jets and is believed to swing in conjunction with the rest of the system,” Explains Torres.
Beyond this initial discovery, additional observations and a theoretical study are required to explain the gamma ray pulses of this unique system.  Scientists from Spain (IEEC-ICE-CSIC), Germany (DESY), China (Nanjing University and Purple Mountain Observatory) and the United States (NRL) have collaborated in this work.
Source: SINC

Original source in Spanish