A recent publication in Nature, led by Matt Nicholl from Queen's University, reports the discovery of repeating X-ray flares known as "Quasi-Periodic Eruptions" (QPEs). These eruptions occur every two days, starting about 4.5 years after a supermassive black hole in a galaxy’s center tore apart a star in what’s known as a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE).
This discovery is the first to establish a connection between QPEs and TDEs, a link first predicted by Dr. Itai Linial and Prof. Brian Metzger of the Columbia Astrophysics Lab. In their 2023 paper, Linial and Metzger proposed that QPEs arise from a star in a tight orbit around a supermassive black hole, repeatedly colliding with the accretion disk formed after the TDE of another star in the same galaxy. This finding encourages the search for more QPE sources in systems that have recently undergone a TDE, opening new pathways for studying black holes and their environments.
