Huge bubble spotted flying around black hole at ‘mind-blowing speed’

In May, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration shocked the world when they released an image of something ablaze like a mottled French cruller. In reality, that wasn’t a donut. It was a stunning portrait of Sagittarius A*, the powerful black hole that anchors our galaxy and whose gravitational pull silently brushes every star, planet and asteroid within it.

This was the first time we’ve set eyes on Her Majesty – a powerful moment in itself – but the scientists weren’t done yet. There was a lot more to learn from Sgr A*.

From Earth’s vantage point, some 27,000 light-years from this black hole, astronomers have been keenly watching and studying the void to decipher exactly how the Milky Way’s powerful engine works. And last month, a crew working with a powerful radio telescope called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Observatory collected some novel clues.

After reviewing ALMA data recorded along with EHT observations of Sgr A*, the team discovered a so-called “hot spot” scooting around the chasm during the monumental imaging process of the black hole. They say this spot appears to darken and lighten as it moves clockwise around Sgr A*.

“We think we’re seeing a hot bubble of gas circling Sagittarius A* in an orbit similar in size to that of the planet Mercury, but making a full loop in just about 70 minutes,” says Maciek Wielgus of the Max Planck Institute for Radio astronomy in Germany and lead author of the study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, said in a statement.

For comparison: Mercury takes 88 earth days to orbit the sun once – and with almost 47 kilometers per second this egg-shaped sphere is considered to be the as fast as possible Planet.

In order for the hot ball of gas to travel all the way around Sgr A* in just 70 minutes, Wielgus said, “This will require a mind-blowing speed of about 30% the speed of light.”

In addition, the researchers believe that the bubble’s orbit is at a distance from the void about five times greater than the black hole’s so-called event horizon. Basically, around every black hole there is a barrier beyond which no light can escape. It means the solid boundary between our visible universe and…whatever lies inside the animal. This is the event horizon.

What’s with this bubble?

The study’s scientists believe their newly located hotspot is linked to bursts, or flares, of X-ray energy radiating from the center of the Milky Way, according to the European Southern Observatory. Indeed, such flares have been spotted in the past by both X-ray and infrared observations of Sagittarius A*, but this is the first time anyone has spotted them through radio telescope data — and with a “very strong hint.” .

We may be seeing this energetic activity at different wavelengths—X-ray, infrared, and radio—because their properties change over time.

“Perhaps these hot spots detected at infrared wavelengths are a manifestation of the same physical phenomenon: as infrared-emitting hot spots cool, they become visible at longer wavelengths, like those observed by ALMA and EHT,” said Jesse Vos, Ph.D. Student at Radboud University in the Netherlands and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Additionally, the results of the team’s new study also appear to be consistent with another long-theorized hypothesis: that flares from the center of the Milky Way are due to magnetic interactions originating from hot gases swirling near Sgr A*.

“Now we find strong evidence for a magnetic origin of these flares, and our observations give us a clue as to the geometry of the process. The new data are extremely helpful for building a theoretical interpretation of these events,” said Monika Mościbrodzka of Radboud University and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Those interpretations, the team explains, could include a look inside the black hole’s elusive magnetic field as a whole, or a glimpse of the environment around the strange hot spot. After all, maybe they could draw a picture of something Yes, really takes place at the heart of the Milky Way – the quietly chaotic place where a monstrous black hole takes up residence.

“In the future, we should be able to track hotspots across frequencies using coordinated multi-wavelength observations with both GRAVITY and ALMA,” said Ivan Marti-Vidal of the University of Valencia in Spain and co-author of the study in a Statement related to another ESO astronomical instrument.

“The success of such an endeavor would be a real milestone in our understanding of the physics of flares in the galactic center.”