Astroboffins baffled as black hole at center of Milky Way suddenly a lot hungrier than before
A team of scientists led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), analysed over 13,000 measurements taken from the Very Large Telescope and Keck Telescopes in Chile and Hawaii respectively. Over 130 days, they studied the brightness emanating from the center of the Milky Way, caused in part by energy released when the black hole feeds off gas and dust.
The team discovered that "unprecedented" levels of near-infrared wavelengths and strange fluctuations that deviate from normal behaviour, according to a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The brightest flux levels observed this year are twice as energetic as what has ever been observed by both observatories.
More: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/13/black_hole_brightness/
So the black hole doesn't consume the energy then if they can see it as a result of consuming matter and light???
I thought it consumed everything?
Roger
Just outside the event horizon (by the smallest imaginable distance) some stuff will still escape, and it will have (and need) quite a bit of energy to do so. It's stuff like that that can be detected.