Scientists Detect Likely Culprit of Strange Radiation Bursts From Heart of Our Galaxy

The likely nature of a strange repeating signal emanating from the vicinity of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy has apparently been deduced by researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Having analyzed data gathered by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope between June and December last year, researchers have concluded that a flare of gamma radiation is emitted every 76 minutes or so from that area.

These gamma rays supposedly originate from a blob of gas that is spinning around the black hole in question, Sagittarius A*, at very high speed (approximately one third of the speed of light).

The researchers also noticed an apparent relation between these gamma ray bursts and the periodic emissions of X-rays from the same area, with the periodicity of the latter being about twice the periodicity of the former.

"The coincidence of the multiwavelength periodicity in X-ray and gamma-ray points towards a single physical mechanism that produces it," scientists Gustavo Magallanes-Guijon and Sergio Mendoza noted in a paper that was posted on the arXiv preprint server last month.