Sagittarius A * is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way , and it ’s mostly a still cosmic target . It does flare up on occasion , especiallyin recent years , but it has nothing on what some other supermassive black-market hole get up to .
Do n’t be fool around by its current conduct , though . Sagittarius A * is capable of dramatic releases of energy . Now , researchers have found evidence suggesting it produce a flash of light so powerful it ignite up gas 200,000 light - years aside .
As reported inan approaching paperin The Astrophysical Journal , Sagittarius A * flared up 3.5 million years ago as a large cloud of hydrogen , about 100,000 times the deal of the Sun , entered the accumulation disk surrounding the black hole . This led to a awful burst . vivid visible radiation and plasma were release from the center of the Milky Way and we continue to see the effects today .
The plasma makes up what we call theFermi Bubbles , two large , red-hot structures above and below the plane of the Milky Way . The intense sparkle stretched so far it hit the Magellanic Stream , the trail of gas pedal left behind by theLargeandSmall Magellanic Clouds , the only companion wandflower to the Milky Way that are visible to the naked heart .
The light from around the black hole strip the hydrogen in the Magellanic Stream of its negatron . This is a process have a go at it as ionisation . The process made the flow shiny , creating a halo - like structure visible in the dark sky . This would have persisted for up to a million years , as our ancestors were moving through the African plains . It was likely visible as a glowing stain along the electric arc of the Milky Way , in the constellation Sagittarius .
" The flash was so powerful that it lit up the stream like a Christmas tree — it was a cataclysmic event ! " lead author Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute said in astatement . " This read us that different regions of the extragalactic nebula are linked — what happens in the galactic center makes a remainder to what happens out in the Magellanic Stream . We ’re take about how the smutty hole impacts the galaxy and its environment . "
There is a lot of gas in the current , enough to make 100 million stars like the Sun , but it is very spread out so study it is not an easy task . The Hubble Space Telescope has a way to do it by looking at how the luminousness of remote galaxies is engulf by the accelerator pedal in the Magellanic stream . The researcher can then compare it with the gas that lead the Magellanic Clouds , do it as the Leading Arm .
The observation showed how the Magellanic flow was ray and ionized , while the Leading Arm does n’t show this . Given the position of the stream , there ’s only one perpetrator : Sagittarius A *
" We always opine that the Fermi Bubbles and the Magellanic Stream were separate and unrelated to each other and doing their own affair in unlike parts of the galaxy ’s halo , " say Fox . " Now we see that the same powerful flash from our beetleweed ’s central black gob has played a major role in both . "
