The supermassive black hole 1ES 1927+654, 270 million light-years from Earth, continues to surprise astronomers with its anomalous behavior, emitting bursts of X-ray radiation at an increasingly high frequency.

The black hole, which has a mass of several million times that of the sun, suddenly disappeared from astronomers' sight in 2018, only to reappear later. It recently began emitting X-ray bursts, the frequency of which has increased from one every 18 minutes to one every 7 minutes. "We've never seen such a sharp increase in frequency," said Megan Masterson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
One possible explanation for this behavior is the oscillation of the black hole's corona, a thin layer of hot plasma surrounding the event horizon. Another hypothesis suggests the presence of a white dwarf orbiting the black hole at a distance of only a few million kilometers. In this case, the white dwarf may be in a precarious equilibrium, which could cause it to fall into the black hole, causing gravitational waves to be emitted.
These phenomena are important for the study of black holes and possible information leaks from behind the event horizon. Although black holes are known for their ability to absorb everything, even light, Hawking's theory predicts that they gradually radiate energy as they lose mass. Observations of 1ES 1927+654 could help reveal more details about these processes.
If a white dwarf does indeed interact with a black hole, it is expected to emit gravitational waves that can be detected by new generations of detectors. This discovery will be an important step in studying the nature of black holes, their evolution and their impact on the fabric of space-time.