How do black holes x ray emissions affect space?

Answer 1

Although black holes affect space directly by increasing the local spacetime curvature through their gravitational field, the x-rays emitted by their accretion disks or from the polar jets would not have much detectable influence upon space itself. One of the earliest questions about the nature of electromagnetic radiation was whether its propagation through space was similar to other wave energy traveling through a medium; a popular notion in 19th century science stated there was a "luminiferous aether" through which light traveled - but experiments such as that of Michelson-Morley largely disproved the concept and it was abandoned. However, Einstein's famous equation describing the equivalence of matter and energy would indicate a somewhat trivial contribution to the curvature of space from all electromagnetic radiation including such x-rays. More profound effects could be demonstrated from the radiation of a black hole's x-rays on nearby matter - such as energizing nearby gas, dust, nebulae etc., or infalling matter approaching the black hole; which would tend to increase its temperature upon at least partially absorbing such energy. Fortunately these x-ray emissions also help us locate black holes otherwise obscured by intervening matter.