Particle.news
Download on the App Store
4 ARTICLES
·
last wk.

Scientists Report Evidence That Milky Way’s Black Hole Blows a Gentle Wind

The finding suggests that even a quiescent supermassive black hole can clear nearby gas, with potential to slow 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 peer‑reviewed paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters reports ALMA radio maps that reveal a cone‑shaped cavity in cold molecular gas pointing away from Sagittarius A*.
  • The result rests on roughly 100 hours of ALMA observations collected over five years and careful subtraction of Sgr A*’s variable radio glow to reveal very faint CO structures.
  • Independent Chandra X‑ray data show hot gas filling the same cone, strengthening the interpretation that the feature is a black‑hole–driven outflow rather than a stellar effect.
  • Authors describe the wind as relatively gentle and possibly long‑lived (order 20,000 years) but stress that direct velocity measurements and continued monitoring are needed to confirm the gas is moving outward.
  • If confirmed, the detection would change how astronomers view low‑power feedback by showing even underfed central black holes can heat or evacuate nearby gas and so affect local star formation and black hole fueling.