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Hot ionized gases escape from the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole and slam into its environment at a significant fraction of the speed of light. And this kind of ultra-fast flow (UFO) could explain the almost empty darkness that surrounds the center of many galaxies, say astronomers now.
These astronomers base their argument, published in the July issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, on a new observation of the PG 1114 + 445 galaxy with the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission's XMM-Newton telescope. European Space Agency. For the first time, researchers were able to capture an image of UFOs pushing other materials into the heart of a galaxy.
Their observations showed that energy was transferred from the UFO to other winds near the black hole, pushing this wind at incredible speeds. The researchers wrote that it was important because it could explain a long-standing mystery about supermassive black holes: the larger the supermassive black hole, the faster the inner stars of its host galaxy move. Gravity alone can not explain this relationship, but if large black holes spit out more intense streams that expel gases at higher speeds, they could also scan nearby stars and accelerate them at higher speeds.
Related: 9 ideas about black holes that will blow your mind
To make this first observation of its kind, the researchers imagined a UFO next to two other types of flux near the black hole: "hot absorbers", which travel much more slowly and are less ionized, and rare "UFOs" driven ". which are the result of the UFO fusion with the hot absorbers and the bulk material floating between the stars. Trained UFOs are rare; it is only the sixth time that we see one and it is only the first time that we see it with the two other types of exits. The researchers said that the combined data tell a story about how UFOs interact with interstellar space.
"The interior UFO carries a very significant amount of impetus and energy," said study author Roberto Serafinelli, astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory. from Brera to Milan, Italy. "[It] is an extremely ionized gas – the iron is rid of all its electrons except one or two – and is launched at an extremely high speed – [about] 15% of the speed of light – from the deepest parts of the accretion disk, very close to the supermassive black hole. "
Researchers can see the extreme amount of movement of the "absorption lines" of reflected light. Here's how it works: Chemicals, like iron, absorb certain wavelengths of light more than others. Researchers can see energy dips (or "absorption lines") at the wavelengths of light coming from an object when these chemicals are present – but when the product chemical moves quickly enough, the wavelengths of light of this object are stretched or "shifted to red". . "All wavelengths elongate and absorption lines appear at unusual places in the spectrum: instead of an absorption line in the usual place From the iron on the spectrum, the redshifting would make the absorption line appear longer, the difference between where the absorption line would normally appear and the length of the wave. The location of the actual line reveals the extent of the light.This, in turn, tells the scientists how fast the object of light was to move, explained Serafinelli to Live Science In the case of these UFOs, the absorption lines were intensely shifted to red, indicating very high speeds.
It turns out that the UFO resulted in the same chemical composition as the warm absorber, said Serafinelli, which means that the UFO has traveled thousands of years in the past. Space to sneak into the warm absorber, thus creating the UFO driven.
As this is only the first time that the researchers saw the three outputs at the same time, they can say with certainty that this effect occurs in the galaxy PG 1114 + 445. And they could see the three only thanks to the XMM-Newton telescope, said Serafinelli, because it has a "power resolution" sharp enough to accurately mark the speeds of different flows. The next step, he said, is finding combinations of similar exits in other galaxies and confirming that UFOs actually have this dramatic effect on their interstellar neighbors.
Originally published on Science live.
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