NASA video illustrates 'X-ray wind' blasting from a black hole

This artist’s illustration shows interstellar gas, the raw material of star formation, being blown away.

In a study published in the journal Nature

this week, a researcher shows a link between the X-ray wind created by a

supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy and the broader

dispersal of raw material that could have formed stars. A new NASA video

(below) provides an easy-to-understand visualization of the process.

Using the Herschel Space Observatory and the X-ray Imaging Spectrometer attached to the Suzaku astronomy satellite,

the researchers looked at galaxy F11119+3257, located an extremely far

2.3 billion light-years away. At the center of that galaxy is a black

hole as massive as 16 million of our suns.

“Scientists

think ultraluminous infrared galaxies like F11119 represent an early

phase in the evolution of quasars, a type of black-hole-powered galaxy

with extreme luminosity across a broad wavelength range,” NASA says in a report about the research.

Emanating from the center of the black hole, the researchers found

gas racing outward at a speed of 170 million mph, creating what’s known

as an X-ray wind. The wind arises because the voracious black hole is

devouring the gas around it in the area known as the accretion disk,

which leads to superheated conditions. This happens relatively close to

the black hole, but the wind stirs a larger molecular outflow and the

heat gives rise to a shock wave that ultimately clears out dust and gas

in a much larger area. The study estimates that the outflow from this

particular black hole extends up to 1,000 light-years from the galaxy’s

center.

In other words,

while busily feeding, a black hole is also “pushing away the dinner

plate,” the report says. This finding provides astronomers with another

piece of the puzzle regarding how black holes are connected to star

formation in the galaxies that swirl around them.

“These

connections suggested the black hole was providing some form of

feedback that modulated star formation in the wider galaxy, but it was

difficult to see how,” said research team member Sylvain Veilleux,

an astronomy professor at University of Maryland. “With the discovery

of powerful molecular outflows of cold gas in galaxies with active

black holes, we began to uncover the connection.”

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NASA video illustrates 'X-ray wind' blasting from a black hole