VLT astronomers find Swift J1727.8-1613 ejects almost half the material
Turns out, black holes aren't just cosmic vacuum cleaners: they can actually spit out almost half the material they pull in from a nearby companion star.
Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope watched a system called Swift J1727.8-1613 (about 8,800 light-years away) and found that black holes are messier eaters than we thought, challenging old ideas about how efficiently they feed.
Noel Castro Segura's film shows outflows
Led by Noel Castro Segura from the University of Warwick, the team made a sort of "movie" showing how material heats up around a black hole and then gets blasted back into space, even when the black hole isn't eating as much.
This expelled material could eventually equal the amount consumed, changing scientists' understanding of how binary star systems in galaxies evolve.