New Population of Giant Filaments Found in Milky Way Galaxy Pointing to Black Hole

Located in the middle of our Milky Way galaxy, these gigantic structures point to the black hole at the center of the galaxy. The researchers say there are hundreds of these structures, each 5 to 10 light-years long.

“It was a surprise to suddenly find a new population of structures that seem to point towards a black hole,” says Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, who led the research at Northwestern University.

I was really stunned when I saw these. We had to work hard to make sure we weren’t deceiving ourselves. And we found that these filaments are not random, but appear to be due to our black hole ejecting matter.

By studying them we can learn more about the spin of the black hole and the orientation of the accretion disk. It’s satisfying to find order in the middle of a chaotic field like the core of our galaxy.

Scientists have no confirmed explanation of where these structures came from, and much about their existence remains a mystery. But one possible explanation is that they were kicked out after some activity a few million years ago.

In the early 1980s, Professor Yusef-Zadeh found a series of gigantic, one-dimensional filaments oscillating throughout our galaxy near the black hole called Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way. These previously undiscovered new filaments are much shorter and stretch out the entire length, radiating outward from the black hole.

“We were always thinking about vertical strands and their origin,” said Yusef-Zadeh.

I’m used to them being vertical. I never thought there could be others across the plane.

These filaments differ in other respects as well: The previously discovered filaments are much longer and more numerous.

Research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, “The Population of the Galactic Center Filaments: Position Angle Distribution Reveal a Degree-scale Collimated Outflow from Sgr A* along the Galactic Plane” Reveals Degree-Scale Parallel Flow from Sgr A*.