<ul><li>An international team of researchers has detected significant X-ray oscillations near the innermost orbit of a supermassive black hole.</li><li>The extreme supermassive black hole 1ES 1927+654, located 270 million light years away, displayed rapid X-ray variability and underwent a period of undetectability for about a month before becoming the brightest supermassive black hole in the X-ray sky.</li><li>The period of the oscillations rapidly changed from around 18 minutes in 2022 to around seven minutes in 2024, which is an unprecedented finding among similar supermassive black holes.</li><li>The study suggests that the rapid X-ray period change could be driven by a white dwarf orbiting close to the supermassive black hole, raising the possibility of detecting gravitational wave signals in future.</li></ul>

Supermassive black hole displays ‘unprecedented’ X-ray outbursts

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