Podcaster: Richard Drumm
Title: UNAWE Space Scoop – Tiny Black Holes Have Big Superpowers
Organization: 365 Days Of Astronomy
Link : http://365daysofastronomy.org/ ; https://spacescoop.org/en/scoops/2504/teenage-galaxy-found-hiding-in-a-cosmic-nursery/
Description: Space scoop, news for children.
In a recent study, astronomers found that even tiny black holes have immense power to shape their part of the galaxy. Far more than previously thought.
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Transcript:
This is the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. Today we bring you a new episode in our Space Scoop series. This show is produced in collaboration with Universe Awareness, a program that strives to inspire every child with our wonderful cosmos.
Today’s story is…
Tiny Black Holes Have Big Superpowers
June 2, 2025
Black holes come in many sizes.
Small, medium, large & extra large.
The size of a black hole mostly depends on how massive the star was before it ran out of fuel, exploded as a supernova and collapsed under its own extreme gravity.
The more massive the black hole, the stronger and larger its effect on the fabric of space and time.
Here’s the new bit!
In a recent study, astronomers found that even tiny black holes have immense power to shape their part of the galaxy.
Far more than previously thought.
Black holes can rip apart a star that comes too close by.
Even the tiniest black holes, known as stellar-mass black holes can do this.
Sometimes this, uh, meet and greet releases stupendous amounts of energy in the form of powerful, invisible jets, looking rather like the way water jets shoot out from a firehose!
Unlike water jets, the jets from black holes can travel through space for many light years.
These jets move at a significant percentage of the speed of light and interact with the surrounding gas as they travel, creating massive shockwaves, known as bow shocks.
These bow shocks are therefore a good indication of black hole jet activities and their long term effects in shaping their galaxies.
Recently, an international team of astronomers found massive bow shocks caused by the jets from two stellar-mass black holes, the X-ray binaries GRS 1915+105 and Cygnus X-1.
The team was using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
Before, only SMBHs, the supermassive black holes, were considered to be massive enough to have far-reaching effects on their host galaxies.
With this discovery, astronomers now have solid evidence that even small black holes can significantly impact their galactic environments, potentially shaping the galaxy’s evolution through cosmic time.
With this new MeerKAT discovery, astronomers think that other similar shockwaves may be hiding in our Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomers are now actively looking for bow shock structures in our galaxy caused by the central black hole activities from thousands of years ago, in order to trace the history of our SMBH.
Hey, here’s a cool fact!
The MeerKAT radio telescope has set a new record by discovering for the first time bow shocks from a never-before-seen jet near GRS 1915+105.
That bow shock is 30 light-years wide – almost 7 times the distance between the Earth and Alpha Centauri.
The other X-ray binary that was studied, Cygnus X-1, was the first X-ray source discovered, by a sounding rocket, in 1964.
It’s 7,000 light years away and its black hole has about 21 solar masses.
The supernova event that created Cygnus X-1 happened between 5 and 7 million years ago.
The black hole’s event horizon is only 88 kilometers across.
The star it orbits, and steals matter from, is a blue supergiant star, called HDE 226868, that has 20 to 40 solar masses, is around 350,000 times as bright as the Sun and is approximately 16 times our Sun’s diameter.
A big boy!
The jet from the black hole is more than 1,000 times as powerful as our Sun and the bow shock where the jet hits the interstellar medium is 5 parsecs wide, so the jet is something like 20 to 40 light years long.
So it won’t be hitting the Earth anytime soon!
The black hole orbits once every 5.6 days at a distance equal to the diameter of the star!
Holy guacamole!
Thank you for listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Planetary Science Institute. Audio post production by me, Richard Drumm, project management by Avivah Yamani, and hosting donated by libsyn.com. This content is released under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Please share what you love but don’t sell what’s free.
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As we wrap up today’s episode, we are looking forward to unravel more stories from the Universe. With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories, and each milestone in space exploration, we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it.
Until next time let the stars guide your curiosity!