A new Mystery in Cosmology
In the constellation Aquila there is a microquasar – that is a black hole about 30 solar masses – which, like all quasars, consumes material from an accretion disc, but splays out some of that material in jets at relativistic speeds from its poles. In common with other quasars it precesses – that is to say the jets wobble from side to side. In this case with a regular period of 162 days.
Researchers have recently found a gas cloud about 100 light years away from that microquasar that gives out pulses of gamma-rays with exactly the same period.
That would not be surprising if one of the jets was pointing in the direction of the gas cloud, but that is not the case.
So at present the method by which the quasar is affecting the gas cloud is said to be “unclear”.
