NASA has admitted that they cannot quite explain the cause of the phenomenon or the ramifications for its existence. The researchers offered several theories for the appearance of the green blob, one being that it may be a black hole consuming another object. NASA explained: “If an object gets too close to a black hole, gravity can pull that object apart, bringing the debris into a close orbit around the black hole.
“Material at the inner edge of this newly formed disk starts moving so fast that it heats up to millions of degrees and radiates X-rays.”
Hannah Earnshaw, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech, said in a statement: “Ten days is a really short amount of time for such a bright object to appear.”
“Usually with NuSTAR, we observe more gradual changes over time and we don’t often observe a source multiple times in quick succession.
“In this instance, we were fortunate to catch a source changing extremely quickly, which is very exciting.”
According to the New York Post, the NuSTAR X-ray observatory was looking at the Fireworks galaxy (NGC 6946) and saw multiple blobs of blue and green light that appeared and disappeared within weeks, according to a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory also witnessed the appearance and disappearance of the green blob, known as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), confirming the sighting.
The usual explanation of these ultraluminous X-ray sources (UXLs) are supernova, but these usually last for a long period of time and do not flicker and diminish like the ones sighted by NASA’s detectors.
Normal, prolonged ULXs are a common occurrence in space, NASA explains how they are “typically long-lived.”
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However, with this ULX, there was “visible light detected with the X-ray source,” which likely rules out that it was a supernova.
One speculation is that this recurring colourful event could be a neutron star.
Neutron stars, which are about the same mass as the Sun, are able to draw in material, creating disks of debris that can generate ULX sources.
But still this is not a satisfactory answer, as if a neutron star spins too fast, the magnetic fields it creates can actually cause a barrier, which would prevent the material from reaching the star’s surface.
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Ms Earnshaw added: “It would kind of be like trying to jump onto a carousel that’s spinning at thousands of miles per hour.”
The New York Post explained that the barrier effect would prevent the star from being a source of X-rays.
However, the barrier might “waver briefly,” which would allow material to fall through and land onto the neutron star’s surface, which could explain the sudden flickering of colour, researchers suggested.
Speaking to the New York Post, Ms Earnshaw said: “This result is a step towards understanding some of the rarer and more extreme cases in which matter accretes onto black holes or neutron stars.”
The NuSTAR X-ray observatory was also looking at the Fireworks galaxy (NGC 6946) and saw multiple blobs of blue and green light that appeared and disappeared within weeks.
The details of the phenomenon appear in a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory also witnessed the appearance and disappearance of the green blob, known as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), confirming the sighting.
Black holes weigh in at more than 130 solar masses.
But, because the runaway implosion of such heavy stellar cores cannot be stopped, instead, they continue to collapse and form black holes where even light cannot escape the gravitational forces.
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