The secret recipe of black holes: Study finds they can 'cook' their own meals in space

Supermassive black holes are often regarded as sources of wanton cosmic destruction, but there may be more to their powerful influence than first meets the eye.

New observations of several distant giant black holes suggest the mysterious entities play a strong role in shaping their environment – even going as far as to "cook" their own cosmic meals, according to NASA. The discovery was made using NASA's space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, as well as optical ground-based telescopes like the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

Researchers studied data from the instruments based on observations of seven distant clusters of galaxies bound together by gravity. The centers of galaxy clusters contain the universe’s most massive galaxies, which, in turn, contains gigantic black holes ranging in mass from millions to tens of billions of times that of the sun, NASA said.

These massive black holes were found to be exerting influence over their surroundings in ways that cause hot gas to cool before flowing back toward them. The self-sustaining cycle ensures the cosmic juggernauts are constantly fueled with a continuous supply of material – or as NASA put it in a press release, "their own meals."

Published last week in the journal Nature Astronomy, the findings help further illuminate just how black holes are able to thrive for billions of years, astronomers say.

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What are supermassive black holes?

Supermassive black holes, regions of space where the pull of gravity is so intense that even light doesn't have enough energy to escape, are often considered terrors of the known universe.

As their name implies, the entities are enormous (Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way is 4.3 million times bigger than the sun.) They're also scarily destructive and perplexing sources of enigma for astronomers who have long sought to learn more about entities that humans can't really get anywhere near.

For that reason, the answer to how black holes grow and thrives has long eluded scientists.

But the new research findings refute the assumption that black holes consume matter indiscriminately, positing that the objects instead have an intricate process of consuming and renewing fuel to grow.

NASA releases images of galaxy clusters with black holes at center

To accompany the study's publication, NASA released images of two of the seven galaxy clusters referenced in the research led by the University of Santiago de Chile.

The images show the Perseus Cluster and the Centaurus Cluster, each with a central black hole appearing as a bright white dot surrounded by patches and filaments of gas.

In each image, a patch of purple with neon pink veins floats in the blackness of space, surrounded by flecks of light.

Dark purple or blue areas represent filaments of hot gas observed by Chandra, launched in 1999 to detect X-ray emissions throughout the universe. Cooler filaments represented by reddish-pink hues were from data collected on the ground by the Very Large Telescope, operated by the European Southern Observatory.

Black holes can 'cook' their own meals, study finds

The data in the images tell a story about how giant black holes consume gas.

By unleashing powerful jets, or outbursts, the black holes kickstart a process to cool hot gas and form warm filaments that allow for the – let's say – now-edible gas to flow back into the cosmic giant for it to feast on. The flow of the returning warm gas causes jets to again release, triggering the cycle to restart.

The process not only provides a neverending fuel source for black holes, the researchers said, but also plays another important cosmic role: allowing for new stars to form.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Black holes can 'cook' their own cosmic meals, NASA data shows: Study