NASA'S SWIFT SURVEY FINDS 'SMOKING GUN' OF BLACK HOLE ACTIVATION

NASA'S SWIFT SURVEY FINDS 'SMOKING GUN' OF BLACK HOLE ACTIVATION -- GSFC (REPLAY)
Data from an ongoing survey by NASA's Swift satellite have helped astronomers solve a decades-long mystery of why only about one percent of super massive black holes emit vast amounts of energy.
This animation illustrates new findings confirming that black holes "light up"
when galaxies collide, and the data may offer insight into the future behavior
of the black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy. The study will appear in the
June 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The intense emission from galaxy centers, or nuclei, arises near a supermassive black hole containing between a million and a billion times the sun's mass. Giving off as much as 10 billion times the sun's energy, some of these active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the most luminous objects in the universe. They include quasars and blazars.

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