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ACTIVE GALAXIES

Massive black holes flaring up time and again

The short and regular bursts in massive black hole systems known as quasi-periodic eruptions have intrigued — and puzzled — astronomers since their discovery. Two such sources recently discovered by SRG/eROSITA suggest that they could be the electromagnetic counterparts to a type of gravitational-wave sources called extreme mass-ratio inspirals.

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Fig. 1: The quasi-periodic eruptions of eRO-QPE1.

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Correspondence to Tingting Liu.

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Liu, T. Massive black holes flaring up time and again. Nat Astron 5, 438–439 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01366-4

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