{"id":111806,"date":"2020-08-17T11:14:49","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T15:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=111806"},"modified":"2020-09-29T15:47:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:47:00","slug":"arecibo-observatory-data-help-lead-to-discovery-of-cosmic-heartbeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/arecibo-observatory-data-help-lead-to-discovery-of-cosmic-heartbeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Arecibo Observatory Data Help Lead to Discovery of Cosmic \u2018Heartbeat\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

An international team of researchers using data from Arecibo Observatory and the Fermi Space Telescope have discovered what they call a \u201cgamma-ray heartbeat\u201d coming from a cosmic gas cloud.<\/p>\n

The cloud is in the constellation Aquilla and \u201cbeats\u201d in rhythm with a black hole 100 light years away in a microquasar system known as SS 433. The results were published today in the journal Nature Astronomy<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis result challenges obvious interpretations and is unexpected from previously published theoretical models,\u201d says Jian Li, a Humboldt Fellow with the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Zeuthen, Germany, and study co-author. \u201cIt provides us with a chance to unveil the particle transport from SS 433 and to probe the structure of the magnetic field in its vicinity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the SS 433 system, a black hole orbits a giant star, 30 times the mass of Earth\u2019s sun. The black hole sucks matter from the giant star while orbiting it, forming a swirling accretion disc that drains into the black hole, like water into a bathtub drain.<\/p>\n

Some of the matter doesn\u2019t fall into the hole though, but rather jets out in high speed spirals from the disc\u2019s center in both directions, top and bottom, like pegs on a wheel.<\/p>\n

The researchers made the discovery by analyzing more than a decade of data from NASA\u2019s Fermi Large Area Space Telescope and from Galactic ALFA HI survey data collected with the Arecibo Observatory\u2019s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope. The observatory was recently damaged<\/a> and is currently offline, but scientists continue to have access to data previously collected. Engineers are assessing what caused a cable to break and plans for repairs.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that the precession, or wobble, of the black hole\u2019s jets matched with a gamma-ray signal emitted from a gas cloud. The researchers have labeled the position in the gas cloud Fermi J1913+0515. The position was revealed using Arecibo Observatory\u2019s telescope, and Fermi provided data about the SS 433 system.<\/p>\n