Astronomers have noticed a vibrant ‘sizzling spot’ swirling across the supermassive black hole on the coronary heart of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
The group behind the invention thinks that the ‘sizzling spot’ may very well be a bubble of sizzling gasoline orbiting Sgr A* as quick as 30% of the pace of sunshine. The invention may assist astronomers and astrophysicists higher perceive the violent setting on the middle of the Milky Way, and round Sgr A* specifically.
“We predict we’re a sizzling bubble of gasoline zipping round Sgr A* on an orbit related in measurement to that of the planet Mercury, however making a full loop in simply round 70 minutes,” Maciek Wielgus, an astrophysicist on the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, stated in a statement (opens in new tab). “This requires a mind-blowing velocity of about 30% of the pace of sunshine!”
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Wielgus led a group that collected observational knowledge utilizing the Atacama Massive Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, comprised of 66 radio antennas unfold throughout the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, as a part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration’s work to picture black holes.
Together with different telescopes within the EHT, ALMA began observing supermassive black holes in 2017. This led to the first-ever image of a black hole, launched in 2019, which depicted the supermassive black hole on the coronary heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Earlier this 12 months, the identical collaboration unveiled the primary picture of Sgr A*.
However ALMA recorded extra knowledge similtaneously the EHT observations of Sgr A*. Wielgus and his group discovered inside that knowledge clues to the character of Sgr A* and its environment, buried within the measurements made by solely ALMA.
The invention comes as a result of ALMA collected a few of its knowledge after a burst, or flare, of X-rays from the center of the Milky Way detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Scientists have beforehand linked flares like this to magnetic interactions in sizzling gasoline bubbles that orbit near Sgr A* at fast speeds.
“What is de facto new and attention-grabbing is that such flares had been to date solely clearly current in X-ray and infrared observations of Sagittarius A*,” Wielgus stated. “Right here we see for the primary time a really robust indication that orbiting sizzling spots are additionally current in radio observations.”
The group means that the new spots detected at infrared wavelengths may very well be the results of gasoline bubbles that turn into seen at longer wavelengths of sunshine (like these ALMA sees) once they quiet down.
“Now we discover robust proof for a magnetic origin of those flares and our observations give us a clue concerning the geometry of the method,” Monika Mościbrodzka, an EHT collaboration group member and an astrophysicist at Radboud College within the Netherlands, stated in the identical assertion. “The brand new knowledge are extraordinarily useful for constructing a theoretical interpretation of those occasions.”
Utilizing ALMA, astronomers and astrophysicists can examine polarized radio wave emissions from Sgr A*, which they’ll use to analyze the magnetic subject surrounding the supermassive black hole. The brand new analysis may assist on this investigation by higher constraining the form of this magnetic subject and particulars of the environment of Sgr A*, the scientists hope.
Moreover, the outcomes assist verify earlier analysis primarily based on knowledge from the GRAVITY instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, which implied that X-ray flares come from clumps of gasoline swirling clockwise round black holes at 30% the pace of sunshine.
The group now hopes that each GRAVITY and ALMA can observe these sizzling spots in a number of wavelengths of sunshine, which may very well be a milestone within the understanding of the physics of flares on the middle of the Milky Way and which might construct on direct observations of Sgr A* and its setting by the EHT.
“Hopefully, one day, we will probably be comfy saying that we ‘know’ what’s going on in Sgr A*,” Wielgus concluded.
A paper detailing the group’s findings is printed within the September challenge of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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