A flickering black hole discovered - by accident

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The space  

 

Unique flickering black hole discovered 

 

Christina Nordh  

 

Published 14.18  

 

Image showing the flickering black hole AT2022tsd located 4.4 billion light years away. Photo: Robert Hurt/Caltech, Ipac  

 

A unique flickering black hole has been discovered in space. 

 

- The object not only radiated in optical light, but was also visible in radio waves and X-rays, says Professor Anna Ho at Cornell University.  

 

The object, AT2022tsd, was discovered at the Zwicky Transient Facility in California last September and is 4.4 billion light-years away from Earth. 

 

- Objects were initially brighter and faded faster than typical supernovae, says Anna Ho, lead author of the study.  

 

A pure coincidence  

 

One hundred days later flickering light from the object was discovered by chance, the outbursts lasting a few minutes and lasting at most a few hours. 

 

Astronomers from Stockholm University played a key role in the study published in Nature.  

 

- Among other things, we used the Nordic telescope NOT on La Palma to study the phenomenon. This is a unique phenomenon that has never been observed before, says Jesper Sollerman.  

 

The researchers believe that it could be a small black hole that is sporadically fed with gas.