Astronomers have monitored the transient appearance of a bubble of gas revolving at “astounding” speeds around the black hole in the middle of the galaxy that contains the Earth, according to a scientific study published Thursday.
Detecting this bubble, whose appearance did not exceed a few hours, would provide information on the behavior of this bubble black holes. What increases the mystery of these astronomical objects is that they are not visible in every sense of the word, as the force of their gravity prevents even light from escaping from them.
away Sagittarius A* supermassive black holeIt is located in the center of the Milky Way, regarding 27,000 light-years from Earth, and it was discovered thanks to the movement of the stars that revolve around it. In May, the EHT International Network of Radio Astronomy Observatories published the first image of the ring of matter that weighs the black hole before being sucked into it.
6. This video shows an animation of the gas bubble orbiting around Sagittarius A*. While the black hole has been directly imaged by the EHT, the orbit and velocity of the bubble are inferred from observations and models.
Credit: @ehtelescope , @IT’S /L. Calcada. Ack.: M. Wielgus pic.twitter.com/Kb8OWuMJI9
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The ALMA telescope, one of those observatories located in Chile, caught a “very surprising” signal in the observation data of Sagittarius A*, astrophysicist Masek Wilgus of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy told AFP.
Just minutes before ALMA captured this data, the Chandra Space Telescope detected a “massive emission” of X-rays from Sagittarius A*, Wilgus explains.
This burst of energy, thought to be similar to solar storms emanating from the sun, emitted a bubble of gas that passed around the black hole at full speed, according to the study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The phenomenon, which lasted regarding an hour and a half, made it possible to perform calculations, which showed that the gas bubble revolved a complete revolution around the black hole in only 70 minutes, and thus at a speed equivalent to 30 percent of the speed of light, which reaches 300,000 kilometers per second, which is a speed “beyond imagination”. , according to Macyek Wilgus.
It is likely that the phenomenon has a magnetic origin, according to the theory explained by the scientist. The black hole’s magnetic field is so strong that it prevents the absorption of a portion of the matter orbiting around it.
However, this accumulation of matter leads to a “burst of flux” that penetrates the magnetic field and releases a burst of energy in the form of a bubble of gas, according to the astrophysicist.
It is expected that observing these magnetic fields will help in understanding how black holes work, and in showing how quickly these black holes rotate on themselves.
(AFP)
