Astronomers have discovered a super-fast wind from a black hole in the Markarian 817 galaxy

An international team of astronomers using the XMM-Newton X-ray telescope has discovered a superfast wind from a black hole in the Markarian 817 galaxy. Sci News reports.

At the center of every large galaxy is a supermassive black hole, whose massive gravity pulls gas from its surroundings. As the gas is pulled in, it gathers into a flat accretion disk around the black hole, where it heats up and ignites.

Over time, the gas closest to the black hole passes the point of no return and is absorbed by it.

However, black holes only absorb part of the gas that approaches them. Around the black hole, some of the material is ejected back into space, sometimes at such a speed that it clears the surrounding interstellar gas.

“In the galaxy we are studying, called Markarian 817, the ‘fan’ is turned on at a lower power level, but it still generates an incredible gust of wind. It is very rare to see such a fast wind, and even rarer to find. wind with enough energy to change their pattern.” galaxy,” said University of Michigan astronomer Miranda Zak.

The fact that Marcarian 817 has been experiencing these outbursts for nearly a year without much activity suggests that black holes can reshape their galaxies more than previously thought, according to Tre Elias Cummoun, an astronomer at the University of Rome.

Markarian 817 is a Seyfert 1 galaxy located 430 million light years away in the constellation Draco. Also known as Mrk 817 or QSO J1436+5847, it contains an active supermassive black hole with a mass of 81 million solar masses.

It was previously reported that astronauts aboard the International Space Station showed how Earth’s atmosphere glows.