“missing link” of black holes

The discovery of a bingeing black hole that is expelling powerful beams of material has shed new light on some of the brightest X-ray sources seen in other galaxies, according to new research led by Durham University. Using Earth-orbiting X-ray telescopes, including NASA's Swift and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellites, a large international team of astronomers watched as the X-ray emission from the black hole in our nearest neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda - found more than 2 million light years away - brightened and faded over the course of six months. This is the first time that radio jets have been detected from a stellar-mass black hole outside our own Milky Way galaxy. It is the second Ultraluminous X-Ray source (ULX) to have been spotted in Andromeda in the past two years. X-ray telescopes have shown how many nearby galaxies host ULXs, which can be bright enough to outshine an entire galaxy in X-rays. Astronomers have spent years debating whether these are black holes just a few times the mass of the Sun which are gorging themselves on gas from an orbiting star, or whether they are more massive black holes eating more sedately. Lead author Matthew Middleton, who led the latest research while at Durham University, said the findings helped solve this debate.