NASA Satellite Sees Black Hole Belching Out Hundred-Million-Degree X-rays

The Bad Astronomer writes "NASA's NuSTAR satellite, designed to detect cosmic X-rays, detected a flare of high-energy emission coming from the Milky Way galaxy's central supermassive black hole. The X-rays were the dying gasp of a small gas cloud being torn apart, heated to a hundred million degrees, and then falling into the black hole itself. Events like this are relatively uncommon, so it's fortunate NuSTAR happened to be observing the black hole when it flared."

Comments

The title makes me weep for science journalism

[Ziggitz]

X-Rays have no temperature, they are EM radiation, not matter.

Re:The title makes me weep for science journalism

[amRadioHed]

At that temperature the scale is fairly irrelevant. It's less than an order of magnitude difference either way.