NASA, the US space agency has discovered a mysterious green glow in deep space that suddenly disappeared and space experts are still unable to explain the real reason that causes these lights.
The study report published in the Astrophysical Journal reveals that the NuSTAR X-ray observatory spotted the green and blue blobs multiple times in the past few weeks while observing the Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946). It should be also noted that NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory had also witnessed the green blobs appearing in deep space.
Hannah Earnshaw, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech said in a recent statement, "Ten days is a really short amount of time for such a bright object to appear. Usually, with NuSTAR, we observe more gradual changes over time, and we don't often observe a source multiple times in quick succession.
"In this instance, we were fortunate to catch a source changing extremely quickly, which is very exciting."
Scientists believe that these blobs are actually the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX). Even though these are common occurrences in space, most of the ULXs detected as of now are not short-lived like the ones discovered recently.
As these green blobs were short-lived, experts believe that this bright light may be the sighting of a black hole consuming another object.
"If an object gets too close to a black hole, gravity can pull that object apart, bringing the debris into a close orbit around the black hole. Material at the inner edge of this newly formed disk starts moving so fast that it heats up to millions of degrees and radiates X-rays," says NASA.
A few weeks back, a study led by the Australian National University had detected a neutron star swallowed by a black hole. It should be noted that this is for the first time that scientists are spotting this rare cosmic event.
