Wind from Milky Way’s black hole solves a 50-year-old mystery
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Astronomers have resolved a 50-year-old mystery concerning Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, by finally detecting evidence of its wind.
The breakthrough was achieved using five years of observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescopes in Chile, which provided an image 100 times deeper and 80 times sharper than previous maps.
Researchers, led by Mark Gorski and Elena Murchikova, discovered a massive, cone-shaped region devoid of gas, which they concluded could only have been carved out by hot wind emanating from Sagittarius A*.
This finding confirms that, like most black holes, Sagittarius A* produces a wind as it consumes surrounding material, despite previous difficulties in detecting it due to obscuring gas and dust.
The observations indicate that Sagittarius A* is currently in a quieter phase, and the discovery helps scientists better understand the black hole’s role in controlling the galaxy’s growth and evolution.
