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Astrophysics

Why black holes pulse brightly

Nature volume 529, pages 28–29 (2016)Cite this article

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Black holes can produce oscillating outbursts of radiation that were thought to be associated with high rates of infalling matter. The observation of pulses of visible light from a black hole complicates this picture. See Letter p.54

Accretion of matter onto black holes is an efficient way of converting mass into energy, much more so than the process of nuclear fusion, which powers the light from stars. But unlike fusion, the physics behind accretion is still not understood, more than 40 years after the identification of accreting black holes in the Milky Way1,2. On page 54 of this issue, Kimura et al.3 present exquisite observations made during a black-hole accretion episode. They show that the visible radiation from the black hole's vicinity oscillates dramatically — sometimes regularly, other times not — in a manner not predicted by models. Such oscillations were previously associated with high rates of infalling matter, but the authors report that the observed oscillations can occur even when the rate of infall is low. Understanding this behaviour could help astronomers to better understand violent accretion episodes onto black holes.

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Figure 1: Light pulses from irregular accretion onto black holes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Poshak Gandhi is in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.,

    Poshak Gandhi

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  1. Poshak Gandhi
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Correspondence to Poshak Gandhi.

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Gandhi, P. Why black holes pulse brightly. Nature 529, 28–29 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/529028a

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