New radio telescope images reveal hundreds of filaments along the galactic plane, each measuring 5 to 10 light-years in length.
These structures likely originated a few million years ago when outflow from our supermassive black hole interacted with surrounding materials.
Researcher: ‘I was actually stunned when I saw these’.
Northwestern University’s Farhad Yusef-Zadeh is something of a detective in the realm of space.
Back in the 1980s, he made a breakthrough discovery: huge, one-dimensional threads, known as filaments, hanging around the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*.
These filaments were vertical, meaning they stood tall like skyscrapers.
Now, Yusef-Zadeh and his team have come across something entirely different: horizontal filaments.
Picture these as shorter spokes sticking out from the hub of a wheel, with the black hole being the hub. These new filaments are like the dots and dashes of Morse code, appearing on one side of Sagittarius A*.
These two kinds of filaments might seem similar, but Yusef-Zadeh thinks they probably come from different sources. The vertical ones, reaching up to 150 light-years high, sweep across the galaxy.
Meanwhile, the horizontal filaments, which are just 5 to 10 light-years long, point towards the black hole.
The study unveiling this new finding will be featured in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Yusef-Zadeh, an expert in radio astronomy and a professor at Northwestern, was taken aback by this fresh revelation. He said, “I was actually stunned when I saw these.
We had to do a lot of work to establish that we weren’t fooling ourselves.” He believes that studying these horizontal filaments could help us understand more about the black hole’s spin and how its surrounding accretion disk is oriented.
For decades, Yusef-Zadeh has been uncovering cosmic secrets at the center of our galaxy, which is a whopping 25,000 light-years from Earth. Thanks to advancements in radio astronomy technology, especially the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, his team has been able to identify and study these fascinating filaments.
The new horizontal filaments have shaken up the team’s understanding. While both types of filaments are one-dimensional, can be seen with radio waves, and seem connected to the galactic center’s activities, that’s where the similarities end.
For example, the vertical filaments are magnetic and carry particles moving nearly at the speed of light, while the horizontal filaments seem to emit thermal radiation.
The discovery is an ongoing mystery, and Yusef-Zadeh and his team are eager to keep investigating. He said, “We always need to make new observations and continually challenge our ideas and tighten up our analysis.” Just like any good detective, his work is never truly finished.
Source: Northwestern University.
