“If you want to understand how galaxies form, you really need to understand these processes outside the black hole that are able to release these enormous amounts of energy and power, these amazingly bright light sources that we’re studying,” says Dan Wilkins, an astrophysicist at Stanford University and the lead author of the study. And because supermassive black holes release so much energy, they are essentially powerhouses that allow galaxies to grow around them. The release of energy by black holes, sometimes in the form of x-rays, is an absurdly extreme process. It will allow for better mapping of how things fall into black holes and how black holes bend the space time around them."
"Although we have seen the signature of x-ray echoes before, until now it has not been possible to separate out the echo that comes from behind the black hole and gets bent around into our line of sight. "This is a really exciting result," says Edward Cackett, an astronomer at Wayne State University who was not involved with the study.
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