In the Media

Space.com reporter Robert Lea writes that using the XMM-Newton X-ray telescope, MIT astronomers have observed bursts of X-rays erupting with increasing frequency from a supermassive black hole, a behavior they think could be caused by a “dead stellar core, or white dwarf, daringly teetering on the edge of the black hole.” Lea explains that “if the source of these strange episodes is a finely balanced white dwarf, the researchers theorize that it could be detected using ripples in space and time called gravitational waves emitted from the system.”