Black Hole Goes Dark: Find out why this giant black hole stopped emitting X-rays

Scientists have observed one of brightest X-ray emissions from our Galaxy, Milky Way, going dark. According to space.com, emissions in question were created by a black hole. Nobody is sure why this happened. Re on to know current ories on this strange development.  

This X-ray of light emitted by a large black hole lives in GRS 1915+105, a star system (a star system is like a solar system) 36,000 light-years from Earth. This star system is unique because it contains a normal star and also second heaviest known black hole in Milky Way galaxy. black hole has approximately 10-18 times mass of our Sun and is only second to Sagittarius A, supermassive black hole at heart of Milky Way.

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region around this black hole shines brightly as it draws energy from neighbouring star. energy of star is constantly sucked into black hole and particles of energy rub toger, forming black hole's accretion disk. This accretion disk lights up incoming X-rays as black hole devours more and more from star.

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Black Hole Goes Dark

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However, since July 2018, something surprising started to happen. light coming from GRS 1915+105 star system began to dim and continued to get dimmer. Nobody has ever seen something like this before. "We suggest that this state should be identified as 'obscured state,'" researchers wrote in a new paper published Jan. 1 to  arXiv database, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. What this basically means is - something is possibly blocking out light from source to Earth. Some large celestial body has come between source and Earth, blocking out incoming light. 

Scientists have a few working ories on how this might be happening. Black holes near large companion starts can get dimmer as clouds of gas from star obscure light coming from black hole. "In case of GRS 1915+105, "Balakrishnan told Live Science, " companion star is low-mass and does not have massive stellar winds that would create observed obscuring gas." researchers also said, "re is a lot of gas in some structure that scatters and blocks light coming from central engine and accretion disk."

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