Home » Like being manipulated by a black hole, hundreds of filaments of hot gas pointing to the black hole were newly discovered in the center of the galaxy | TechNews Technology New Report

Like being manipulated by a black hole, hundreds of filaments of hot gas pointing to the black hole were newly discovered in the center of the galaxy | TechNews Technology New Report

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Like being manipulated by a black hole, hundreds of filaments of hot gas pointing to the black hole were newly discovered in the center of the galaxy | TechNews Technology New Report

Like being manipulated by a black hole, hundreds of filaments of hot gas pointing to the black hole in the center of the galaxy were newly discovered

For the past half century, astronomers have known of nearly a thousand filaments of energetic electrons perpendicular to the center of the galaxy, aligned with the galaxy’s magnetic field. After recently analyzing data from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, astronomers have suddenly discovered a group of new filament structures that seem to point to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

In the 1980s, Northwestern University astrophysicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh discovered some filaments aligned perpendicular to the Milky Way, indicating that they are aligned with the galaxy’s magnetic field. These stars are 150 light-years long and are likely composed of high-energy electrons. Last year, Farhad Yusef-Zadeh’s team reported that they had found nearly a thousand vertical filaments so far, and that they came in pairs and clusters.

But after analyzing data from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, Farhad Yusef-Zadeh’s team discovered another surprising picture: hundreds of new filament structures that seem to point in the direction of the black hole.

These new filaments are only 5-10 light-years long, all located on the same side of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, and different from the vertical filaments discovered in the past, the new structure is close to the horizontal direction of the Milky Way plane.

Despite their superficial resemblance, the two types of filaments are quite different from each other. For example, the vertical filaments are much larger and don’t point specifically at the black hole. They number in the thousands and are filled with particles moving almost at the speed of light. Yusef-Zadeh suspects that the two have different origins. It is estimated that the new filaments have a history of about 6 million years, which may originate from the Sagittarius A* eruption jet and stretch the surrounding gas.

By studying the filaments, astronomers can learn more about the black hole’s spin and the orientation of the accretion disk, which gives us a better understanding of how Sagittarius A* eats the material around it.

The new paper is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

(Source of the first image: Northwest University)

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