A few weeks after NASA released the first-ever image of a black hole, astronomers have announced another black hole first.
This black hole, named V404 Cygni after the Cygnus constellation where it appears, might literally be "warping space" around it, Space reports. We've never seen anything like it — instead of sucking all matter into itself, like black holes tend to do, V404 Cygni has been observed spewing particles out of its gravitational pull.
Scientists have observed black holes ejecting particles before, in streams called "relativistic jets." What truly sets this black hole apart is that it's doing so at speeds we never thought possible — so fast that when astronomers initially tried to get a picture of the process, all that came back was a blur. They had to change the exposure time of their pictures from four hours to just 70 seconds in order to see what was going on.
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The new find, published on Monday in Nature, was "completely unexpected," said Greg Sivakoff, one of the study's co-authors. V404 Cygni has "deepened our understanding" of how black holes work.
Currently, scientists think that the fast-paced wobbling of this black hole has something to do with Einstein's theory of general relativity, Space explained. According to that theory, when an object as big as a black hole spins, it pulls the fabric of space and time with it.
Learn more about how this unusual discovery could inform our theories about the universe at Space.
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