New study suggests relation between feeding pattern of black hole & its mass; read

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found a definitive relationship between the mass of a black hole and its light-emission pattern. The study is published in a journal called Science and claims that the observed light being emitted from a supermassive black hole is not constant and shows flickering on a timescale ranging from hours to decades. Keep reading to know more about the black hole feeding pattern and how it is related to the lights from the black hole.

Research suggests relation between the light emitting and size of black hole

Supermassive black holes can range from being million to a billion times heavier than the star around which Earth revolves. These extremely massive entities are situated at the centre of large galaxies, feeding on the stars and gas around them and can be detected by finding an influence on nearby stars and gas. However, when these black holes are dormant, they emit tiny amounts of light. As the new research by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign states, these black holes emitted enormous amounts of radiation when they were growing and actively feeding. 

That being said, the study has found a relation between the light being emitted by a black hole and its mass, indirectly being associated with the size. The team of researchers put together a large set of data from the actively feeding supermassive black holes and studied the variations in the pattern of light being emitted. In due course, the team found out a timescale over which the pattern of light is related to the mass of the supermassive black hole. The results held true when compared to accreting white dwarfs like Sun. 

The study was led by an astronomy graduate student Colin Burke and professional Yue Shen. According to Burke, there have been several studies in the past that tried to establish a relation between flickering of light and the mass of a supermassive black hole, but the results were not promising, or even controversial. Burke also says that now that there is a definitive relationship between the flickering light patterns and then the mass of the central accreting object, it can be used to predict what a flickering signal might look like.