Black holes ‘burp’ after eating gas and stars

A team of scientists discovered that the black holes emitted light, similar to "burping", when they eat gas and stars around them, and this change in the brightness is directly related to its size.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs), millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun, are typically found in the centre of galaxies, including one at the centre of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A.

According to scientists, when the black holes are inactive, they do not release a lot of light but when they are active, usually in the dawn of the universe and in case they consume all known materials, they release radiation larger than their galaxies, with flashing light lasting for hours to decades.

Colin Burke, the main author of the study said, “There have been many studies which revealed potential relations between the spotted beating and the massive mass of the black hole, but the results were not crucial and sometimes controversial.

The massive black hole swallows a large amount of material and when this material starts to move at high speed due to the gravity of the black hole, it emit intuitive energy, which pushes the surrounding material out. This is how the galactic wind is created.

It is still not clear why the flickering occurs due to "physical processes that are not yet understood."

Smaller supermassive black holes have a shorter timescale, while conversely, larger supermassive black holes have a longer timescale.