The Fascinating Flicker of the first black hole to be imaged.

The Fascinating Flicker of the first black hole to be imaged (M87*).

When scientists presented the first image of a black hole last year, it was called an extraordinary breakthrough.

Now, after re-evaluating some of the data from the images they took in the years leading up to that historic photo, the researchers are giving us some new perspectives on the object known as M87 *, which has a monstrous mass of 6.5 billion suns.

One of the data discovered is that the brightness of the black hole flickers over time.

This is likely as a result of M87 * crushing and consuming nearby matter caught in the fierce tug of its gravity.
Matter, heated to billions of degrees, twists and turns through strong magnetic fields. And as it does so, the region of glow seen in the black hole's surrounding gas ring appears to tremble.

What we see is the flow of matter spinning and finally falling over the event horizon, but this matter, this flow of plasma, of gas, is very turbulent, explains Maciek Wielgus, an astronomer at Harvard University, USA. .

We were expecting this turbulence. There is what is called a magneto-rotational instability rolling over this turbulence. And for that reason, there is some stochasticity (randomness in behavior); it seems that drops of brightness are formed in different places, he told her. to the BBC.