One of the fun aspects of astrophysics is that much of it involves phenomena which you cannot exactly study from up close, with the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of this galaxy – called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A) – being a great example. Although it’s been predicted since 1971 that black holes like Sgr A radiate energy which then pushes away nearby matter to create something akin to solar wind, this had so far not been proven. Now astronomers have discovered evidence for this emanating from Sgr A*.
Using five years worth of observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) and correlating it with other observations, a Southern Lobe of movement was identified, along with evidence for a Northern Lobe. Unlike a star where you are dealing with relatively massive quantities of matter being hurled into space, in the case of a very quiet SMBH like Sqr A* you are talking about occasional small wisps of gas of which a fraction gets turned into the radiation that then exerts pressure on the remaining gas.
It is speculated to be exactly this quiescent nature of Sgr A* that makes it so difficult to find evidence of SMBH wind, though one could also argue that having a well-fed SMBH whose event horizon rapidly expands would be fascinating from an astrophysics perspective, but less exciting for any nearby inhabited planets.
Black hole must have eaten something bad.
What’s the galactic equivalent of Taco Bell?
Eating a gas giant??😁
HAHA :D
TIL Hackaday’s blog authoring tools uses Markdown… a couple of backslashes might be needed above
My thoughts exactly….
(and not reading the articlethey just published… don’t worry, we have all been there)
minor spelling mistake:
“a very quiet SMBH like Sqr A* you are talking about”
instead of
“a very quiet SMBH like Sgr A* you are talking about”
please note the q that should be a g
“One of the fun aspects of astrophysics is that much of it involves phenomena which you cannot exactly study from up close,”
Fun fact: The human person to study this up close will also set the record for being the tallest human ever.
Ugh, which there was an edit. s/The human person/The first human
I’m just blown away by this!! …. I’ll let myself out.
That first sentence caught me up short: Every large galaxy has a black hole in its center.
Whoa. TIL…
Due to the issues that made us temporarily fill things in with ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ it is clear that there is a gap in our knowledge, and this makes much of the mentioned subjects in this article rather uncertain. So keep that in mind.
That includes the thing you mentioned Paul, it’s all a bit of a grey area right now until we figure it out better.