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July 01, 2015: NASA is monitoring a newly awakened black hole after it released a blast of high-energy light.NASA is monitoring a newly awakened black hole after it released a blast of high-energy light.
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The explosion was detected by NASA’s Swift satellite on June 15, and originated from V404 Cygni, a binary system at least 8,000 light-years away from Earth.
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"Relative to the lifetime of space observatories, these black hole eruptions are quite rare," said the Swift's principal investigator Neil Gehrels.
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"So when we see one of them flare up, we try to throw everything we have at it, monitoring across the spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays."
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The blast was triggered when gas siphoned off a neighbouring star by the black hole became super-heated, releasing a stream of X-rays.
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The gas, which until recently had been forming a disk around the black hole, reached critical mass, rushing towards the centre in a flood of light.
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The V404 Cyngi star system has flared up a number of times since the eruption first began.

"It repeatedly becomes the brightest object in the X-ray sky—up to 50 times brighter than the Crab Nebula, which is normally one of the brightest sources," European Space Agency project scientist Erik Kuulkers said.
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"It is definitely a 'once in a professional lifetime' opportunity."

© ninemsn 2015