Plasma-spewing black hole dragging spacetime
Astronomers have discovered a black hole, almost 8,000 light-years from Earth, pumping rapidly swinging plasma jets into the surrounding universe at a speed so fast that it is dragging spacetime.
The research, published in the journal Nature, shows jets from V404 Cygni's black hole behaving in a way never seen before on such short timescales.
The jets appear to be rapidly rotating with high-speed clouds of plasma -- potentially just minutes apart -- shooting out of the black hole in different directions.
"This is one of the most extraordinary black hole systems I have ever come across," said Associate Professor James Miller-Jones, from the Australia's Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).
Like many black holes, it is feeding on a nearby star, pulling gas away from the star and forming a disk of material that encircles the black hole and spirals towards it under gravity.
"What is different in V404 Cygni is that we think the disk of ...