| Type |
Journal Article |
| Names |
Elena Gallo, Rob Fender, Christian Kaiser, David Russell, Raffaella Morganti, Tom Oosterloo, Sebastian Heinz |
| Publication |
Nature |
| Volume |
436 |
| Issue |
7052 |
| Pages |
819-821 |
| Date |
August 1, 2005 |
| URL |
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005Natur.436..819G |
| Library Catalog |
NASA ADS |
| Abstract |
Black holes undergoing accretion are thought to emit the bulk of their
power in the X-ray band by releasing the gravitational potential energy
of the infalling matter. At the same time, they are capable of producing
highly collimated jets of energy and particles flowing out of the system
with relativistic velocities. Here we show that the 10-solar-mass
(10Msolar) black hole in the X-ray binary Cygnus X-1 (refs
3-5) is surrounded by a large-scale (~5pc in diameter) ring-like
structure that appears to be inflated by the inner radio jet. We
estimate that in order to sustain the observed emission of the ring, the
jet of Cygnus X-1 has to carry a kinetic power that can be as high as
the bolometric X-ray luminosity of the binary system. This result may
imply that low-luminosity stellar-mass black holes as a whole dissipate
the bulk of the liberated accretion power in the form of `dark',
radiatively inefficient relativistic outflows, rather than locally in
the X-ray-emitting inflow. |