The discovery of this bubble, which lasted no more than a few hours, provides information on the behavior of black holes. What adds to the mystery of these astronomical objects is that they are not visible in any sense of the word, as the force of their gravity also prevents light from escaping from them.
The gigantic black hole “Sagittarius A” located at the center of the Milky Way is about 27,000 light years from the planet, and was discovered thanks to the movement of the stars that revolve around it. Last May, the IHT International Network of Radio Astronomical Observatories released the first image of the ring of matter that resonates with the black hole before being sucked into it.
The ALMA telescope, one of these observatories located in Chile, has detected a “very surprising” signal in the observation data of Sagittarius A, astrophysicist Masek Wilgus of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy told AFP.
Minutes before ALMA captured this data, the Chandra Space Telescope detected a “massive emission” of X-rays from Sagittarius A, Wilgus explains.
This burst of energy, believed to be similar to solar storms emanating from the sun, emitted a gas bubble that passed around the black hole at full speed, according to the study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The phenomenon, which lasted about an hour and a half, made it possible to carry out calculations that showed that the gas bubble made a complete revolution around the black hole in just 70 minutes, and therefore at a speed equivalent to 30 percent of the speed. of light, which reaches 300,000 kilometers per second, which is an “extraordinary” speed, according to Masek Wilgus.
It is likely that the phenomenon has a magnetic origin, according to the theory explained by the scientist. The magnetic field of the black hole is so strong that it prevents the absorption of a part of the matter that orbits around it.
However, this accumulation of matter leads to a “burst of flux” that penetrates the magnetic field and releases a burst of energy, in the form of a gas bubble, according to the astrophysicist.
Observing these magnetic fields is expected to help understand how black holes work and show how quickly these black holes spin around on themselves.
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