Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University, NASA and the Rochester Institute of Technology found that the reason for x-ray emissions from black holes was because of the high temperatures that the spiraling gases experience.
Scientists have, for some time now, been trying to figure out the mystery behind X-Ray emissions from black holes. Now, a joint study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University, NASA and the Rochester Institute of Technology may have found an answer to this mystery. Researchers found that gases travel toward a black hole in a spiral formation called the accretion disk, which in turn raises the temperature inside the gases to about 10 million degrees Celsius. The temperature of the main body of this disk is about 2,000 times hotter than the sun and emits low-energy or "soft" X-rays. However, scientists have also detected "hard" x-rays being emitted from black holes. These "hard" x-rays produce 100 times higher energy levels.
"Black holes are truly exotic, with extraordinarily high temperatures, incredibly rapid motions and gravity exhibiting the full weirdness of general relativity," Julian Krolik, professor of physics and astronomy in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, said in a press release. "But our calculations show we can understand a lot about them using only standard physics principles."
After studying these rays using a combination of supercomputer simulations and traditional hand-written calculations, authors of the study found that these rays were caused because of gas being drawn into a black hole. The computer simulation used equations that controlled magnetic fields near an accreting black hole. Researchers found that rising temperature, density and speed of the inflowing gas dramatically amplify magnetic fields. They also found evidence of creation of photon in a hot, tenuous region in the disk called the corona. This corona is responsible for much of the ultra-violet and X-ray luminosity seen in the solar spectrum.
"Our work traces the complex motions, particle interactions and turbulent magnetic fields in billion-degree gas on the threshold of a black hole, one of the most extreme physical environments in the universe," said Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal.
