# @europeanspaceagency on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DExenehMdCv
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/35582251-europeanspaceagency-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/e8d4a89c3b.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-01-13T16:50:00.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** J.L.Lopez (@xandler80) — https://gondola.cc/xandler80

## Caption

When a black hole refuses to play by the rules 🕳️

Our XMM-Newton has uncovered something truly extraordinary at the heart of a nearby galaxy: a supermassive black hole behaving in ways that challenge everything we thought we knew about these cosmic giants.

Here’s the story:
- Meet 1ES 1927+654, a supermassive black hole that’s been under XMM-Newton’s watchful eye since 2011. While it behaved as expected at first, things took a wild turn in 2018 when an outburst caused its X-ray corona to vanish — only to reappear later.
- Fast-forward to July 2022, when the black hole’s X-rays started fluctuating rapidly. These mysterious signals, known as quasi-periodic oscillations, are rarely seen in supermassive black holes.

What’s causing the oscillations?
Astronomers believe a white dwarf — the remnants of a dead star — is caught in the black hole’s accretion disc, orbiting at incredible speeds. Calculations suggest it completes an orbit every 7–18 minutes, travelling at up to half the speed of light.

But here’s the twist:
The white dwarf should’ve been swallowed by now. According to predictions based on Einstein’s general relativity, the oscillations were supposed to stop in January 2024. Yet, when XMM-Newton checked in March, the signals were still there!

Could the white dwarf be slowly torn apart instead of falling in whole? Or is the black hole itself behaving in an entirely new way? 

Enter LISA, our future gravitational wave observatory:
Launching in the 2030s, LISA will be perfectly equipped to detect the gravitational waves coming from this black hole. If it picks up the signals, it could confirm the presence of the white dwarf and offer unprecedented insights into the extreme physics near black holes.

🖥️ @NASA/@sonomastateuniversity , Aurore Simonnet
📸 XMM-Newton UBV color
📸 XMM-Newton UV color
📸 XMM-Newton Soft X-Ray EPIC color

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 32,650
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## Credits

These are the roles credited on Gondola. Credits may be incomplete.
A brand, account owner, or featured person is not necessarily the creator.

| Name | Username | Profile | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ESA - European Space Agency | @europeanspaceagency | https://gondola.cc/europeanspaceagency | Government Organization |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Producer |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Editor |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Social Media Manager |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Publisher |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Copywriter |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Community Manager |

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