MeerKAT image of Galactic center with vertical and horizontal filaments
Farhad Youssef Zadeh/Northwestern University
The center of our galaxy is filled with hundreds of strange threads of hot gas. It may have been formed by an explosion from Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole resident in the Milky Way galaxy.
Farhad Youssef Zadeh Doctors at Northwestern University in Illinois discovered these filaments using data from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. In the 1980s, Youssef Zadeh discovered a pair of vertical filaments aligned perpendicular to the galactic disk, but the newly discovered horizontal filaments were completely unexpected.
“The vertical filaments line up with the galactic magnetic field, but the rest should line up randomly,” he says. “I was surprised by the patterns I saw. I couldn’t believe it at first.”
Vertical filaments reach heights of up to 150 light-years, while horizontal filaments are only 5-10 light-years long, all pointing toward Sagittarius A*. These horizontal filaments appear to be composed of gas, unlike the vertical filaments, which are probably composed of high-energy electrons. They also appear to be moving away from Sagittarius A* and toward the outer regions of the galaxy where Earth is located.
The orientation of the filament and its motion indicate that the filament formed when the jet erupted from Sagittarius A* and might have stretched the gas that the jet passed through. up to tendrils. Their position relatively close to the black hole indicates that this explosion most likely began about 6 million years ago and may still be continuing, albeit at a much lower intensity today. I’m here.
There have been some hints from studies of the region right next to Sagittarius A* that such explosions have occurred, but they have not yet been confirmed. “We hope to combine these large-scale structures with smaller ones around black holes to show that there really are jets erupting along the galactic disk,” Youssef said. Zadeh says “It could have very profound implications for our understanding of the axis of rotation of black holes.”
It could mean that the rotation axis of Sagittarius A* is perpendicular to the rotation axis of the entire galaxy, which is how our galaxy formed and how it now functions with its central black hole. It will provide important clues as to whether they are interacting.
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