X-ray flashes from a nearby supermassive black hole accelerate mysteriously

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One supermassive black hole has kept astronomers glued to their scopes for the last several years. First came a surprise disappearance, and now, a precarious spinning act.

The black hole in question is 1ES 1927+654, which is about as massive as a million suns and sits in a galaxy that is 270 million light-years away. In 2018, astronomers at MIT and elsewhere observed that the black hole’s corona — a cloud of whirling, white-hot plasma — suddenly disappeared, before reassembling months later. The brief though dramatic shut-off was a first in black hole astronomy.

The astronomers have detected flashes of X-rays coming from the black hole at a steadily increasing clip. Over a period of two years, the flashes, at millihertz frequencies, increased from every 18 minutes to every seven minutes. This dramatic speed-up in X-rays has not been seen from a black hole until now.

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