XRISM detects solar style flare near supermassive black hole

Astronomers led by the Technion in Israel have detected a magnetic flare near a supermassive black hole using data from the XRISM X-ray observatory, Nature World News reported. The flare occurred in the corona of the supermassive black hole located at the center of the galaxy NGC 3783. This marks the first time that a solar storm flare pattern has been identified around a black hole. [1]

Nature World News reported that the black hole in NGC 3783 contains approximately 28 million times the mass of the Sun. The observatory captured a fast outflow alongside the flare. Researchers said the event mirrors the way the magnetic field of the Sun snaps and ejects material, which is the same physics that drives space weather on Earth. [1]

Supermassive black holes contain masses ranging from hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the Sun. As FTMQ Space reported earlier, Technion researchers previously identified solar-storm-like eruptions near the black hole in NGC 3783 in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. [4][5]

The discovery shows that magnetic physics driving solar flares on the Sun also operates in the extreme environments surrounding supermassive black holes. [1]