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6h ago

Astronomers Find Hot Wind Carving Cone from Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Deep ALMA maps paired with Chandra X-ray images show a steady low-power outflow that clears cold gas, altering nearby star formation.

Astronomers spent 50 years looking for wind from the Milky Way's black hole — finding it quietly rewrites what 'dormant' actually means at the center of a galaxy
Image
This image shows the evidence for the wind blowing away from Sagittarius A*: the white dot in the center of the image shows the supermassive black hole; in orange is data from ALMA, mapping the location of cold gas composed of carbon monoxide in the image; in blue is X-ray data from Chandra; a large cone-shaped cavity, visible as an absence of cold gas in the ALMA data, is filled by hot X-ray-emitting gas in the Chandra data. Image credit: NASA / CXC / UMass / Wang et al. / ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Longmore et al. / Minniti et al.

Overview

  • A Northwestern team published early June 2026 that deep radio observations reveal a one-parsec, 45° cone nearly empty of cold carbon monoxide pointing back at Sagittarius A*.
  • The result is based on roughly 100 hours of ALMA data taken from 2017–2021 using a new calibration to subtract Sgr A*’s variable radio glow and expose very faint molecular structure.
  • NASA’s Chandra X-ray maps fill the same conical region with hot gas, strengthening the interpretation that the feature is a black-hole-driven outflow rather than an imaging artifact or stellar winds.
  • The team estimates the wind has been active for about 20,000 years and says it is gentle compared with quasar jets yet powerful enough to reshape local cold gas and affect star formation.
  • Key follow-ups include direct kinematic measurements of gas motion, time monitoring to watch the cavity evolve, and deeper observations to confirm a tentative counter-cone on the opposite side.