* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Hank Hill returns to a changed world in new ‘King of the Hill’ episodes – New Haven Register

    Hank Hill Navigates a Bold New World in Thrilling New ‘King of the Hill’ Episodes

    Exclusive | Fox Takes Stake in IndyCar Owner Penske Entertainment – The Wall Street Journal

    Exclusive | Fox Takes Stake in IndyCar Owner Penske Entertainment – The Wall Street Journal

    Go-to entertainment: why gaming was made for the toilet – The Guardian

    Why Gaming Is the Ultimate Way to Pass Time in the Bathroom

    Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra takes the Lollapalooza stage – Yahoo Home

    Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra takes the Lollapalooza stage – Yahoo Home

    Sens. Blackburn, Warnock introduce CREATE Act to provide tax relief to music creators – Yahoo Home

    Sens. Blackburn and Warnock Launch CREATE Act to Deliver Tax Relief for Music Creators

    That’s (Political) Entertainment: When Theatre Meets Politics

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Nasdaq-listed Verb Technology to build $558 million TON treasury, rebrand as TON Strategy Co. – The Block

    Nasdaq-Listed Verb Technology to Build $558 Million TON Treasury and Rebrand as TON Strategy Co

    How Tech Firms Like Google and Meta Are Embracing the Military – The New York Times

    How Tech Firms Like Google and Meta Are Embracing the Military – The New York Times

    Credo Technology: Wiring The AI Revolution (NASDAQ:CRDO) – Seeking Alpha

    Credo Technology: Driving the Next Wave of AI Innovation

    Microsoft Seeks to Extend Access to OpenAI Technology – PYMNTS.com

    Microsoft Aims to Broaden Access to OpenAI Technology

    Livonia police use grappler technology to stop drunk driver – ClickOnDetroit | WDIV Local 4

    Livonia Police Deploy Grappler Technology to Safely Stop Drunk Driver

    Emory orthopaedic surgeons use robotic technology to transform knee replacement surgery – Emory News Center

    How Robotic Technology is Revolutionizing Knee Replacement Surgery

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Hank Hill returns to a changed world in new ‘King of the Hill’ episodes – New Haven Register

    Hank Hill Navigates a Bold New World in Thrilling New ‘King of the Hill’ Episodes

    Exclusive | Fox Takes Stake in IndyCar Owner Penske Entertainment – The Wall Street Journal

    Exclusive | Fox Takes Stake in IndyCar Owner Penske Entertainment – The Wall Street Journal

    Go-to entertainment: why gaming was made for the toilet – The Guardian

    Why Gaming Is the Ultimate Way to Pass Time in the Bathroom

    Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra takes the Lollapalooza stage – Yahoo Home

    Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra takes the Lollapalooza stage – Yahoo Home

    Sens. Blackburn, Warnock introduce CREATE Act to provide tax relief to music creators – Yahoo Home

    Sens. Blackburn and Warnock Launch CREATE Act to Deliver Tax Relief for Music Creators

    That’s (Political) Entertainment: When Theatre Meets Politics

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Nasdaq-listed Verb Technology to build $558 million TON treasury, rebrand as TON Strategy Co. – The Block

    Nasdaq-Listed Verb Technology to Build $558 Million TON Treasury and Rebrand as TON Strategy Co

    How Tech Firms Like Google and Meta Are Embracing the Military – The New York Times

    How Tech Firms Like Google and Meta Are Embracing the Military – The New York Times

    Credo Technology: Wiring The AI Revolution (NASDAQ:CRDO) – Seeking Alpha

    Credo Technology: Driving the Next Wave of AI Innovation

    Microsoft Seeks to Extend Access to OpenAI Technology – PYMNTS.com

    Microsoft Aims to Broaden Access to OpenAI Technology

    Livonia police use grappler technology to stop drunk driver – ClickOnDetroit | WDIV Local 4

    Livonia Police Deploy Grappler Technology to Safely Stop Drunk Driver

    Emory orthopaedic surgeons use robotic technology to transform knee replacement surgery – Emory News Center

    How Robotic Technology is Revolutionizing Knee Replacement Surgery

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Supermassive black hole winds blowing at 36 million miles per hour can sculpt entire galaxies

June 24, 2024
in Science
Supermassive black hole winds blowing at 36 million miles per hour can sculpt entire galaxies
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

A glowing red and orange disk with a black circle at its center and blue streaks coming from it.

An illustration of cosmic winds blowing from a supermassive black hole.
(Image credit: NASA/CXC and Nahks Tr’Ehnl)

A bright quasar, powered by a supermassive black hole, is blasting out radiation that pushes away clouds of gas in its surroundings to generate winds reaching speeds of around 36 million miles per hour (58 million kilometers per hour). Oh, and the quasar is also nearly as old as the universe itself.

The discovery, made by a team of scientists led by University of Wisconsin–Madison astronomers, shows the role that feeding supermassive black holes at the hearts of so-called “active galactic nuclei,” or “AGNs,” can play in sculpting the wider galaxies around them.

The researchers arrived at their findings using eight years of data about the quasar SBS 1408+544, located 13 billion light-years away in the constellation Bootes. This data was collected by the Black Hole Mapper Reverberation Mapping Project carried out by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The light from SBS 1408+544 has been traveling to Earth for 13 billion years; that’s almost as long as the 13.8 billion-year-old universe has existed.

Related: A massive black hole may be ‘waking up’ in a nearby galaxy

While supermassive black holes with masses equivalent to millions, or sometimes billions, of suns are thought to exist at the hearts of most galaxies, not all of these power up quasars. Quasar black holes are surrounded by matter in a flattened swirling cloud called an “accretion disk” that gradually feeds them material.

The immense gravitational influence of a quasar’s central supermassive black hole causes friction and tidal forces that heat the matter of the accretion disk, causing it to glow intensely. Additionally, matter that is not fed to the supermassive black hole is channeled to the poles of the cosmic titan by powerful magnetic fields, where it is accelerated to near-light speeds and blasted out as highly collimated jets. These dual jets from each black hole pole are also accompanied by emissions of electromagnetic radiation.

Not only does this radiation make some quasars brighter than the combined light of every star in the galaxies around them, but this light also shapes those galaxies and offers a useful gauge for astronomers to measure the influence black holes have on galaxies in general.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

“The material in that [accretion] disk is always falling into the black hole, and the friction of that pulling and pulling heats up the disk and makes it very, very hot and very, very bright,” team leader and University of Wisconsin–Madison astronomy professor Catherine Grier said in a statement. “These quasars are really luminous, and because there’s a large range of temperatures from the interior to the far parts of the disk, their emission covers almost all of the electromagnetic spectrum.”

Blue, orange, and yellow points of light against a black background in green crosshairs

An image of the supermassive black hole powered quasar SBS 1408+544 in the constellation Bootes (Image credit: Jordan Raddick and the SDSS collaboration)

The bright light from this particular quasar allowed Grier and colleagues to track winds of gaseous carbon. This was done by measuring gaps in the broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the quasar, which indicated light being absorbed by carbon atoms. 

The team found that every time they measured this absorption spectrum over 130 observations of SBS 1408+544, there was a shift from the rightful position of the carbon absorption “shadow.” This increased over time as radiation from the quasar pushed away material from around it. This material formed the supermassive black hole winds that reached speeds of up to 36 million miles per hour (58 million kilometers per hour), which is about 45,000 times the speed of sound.

“That shift tells us the gas is moving fast, and faster all the time,” said team co-leader and University of Wisconsin–Madison astronomy graduate Robert Wheatley. “The wind is accelerating because it’s being pushed by radiation that is blasted off of the accretion disk.”

A bright orange ring with bright swirls of light within it against a dark background

The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Sgr A* seen in polarized light is a dormant giant (Image credit: EHT Collaboration)

Scientists have suspected that they have spotted accelerating supermassive black hole winds before, but this is the first time that observation has been backed up with hard evidence. Such cosmic winds are of great interest to astronomers because the gas they shift around serves as the building blocks of stars. That means, if black hole winds are powerful enough, they can cut off star formation, thereby “killing” their host galaxies. They can also deprive central supermassive black holes of fuel, ending their days as quasar machines.

That could turn an active galaxy into a quiet galaxy like the Milky Way, which, in addition to forming stars at a very slow rate, also has a “sleeping giant” black hole at its heart. Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), our black hole, is surrounded by so little matter that its diet of gas and dust is equivalent to a human eating a grain of rice every million years. Alternatively, the winds from supermassive black holes could compress gas rather than push it away, which would trigger new bouts of star formation in their host galaxies. 

Black hole winds like the kind seen by the team could also travel beyond the outskirts of their galaxies, influencing neighboring galaxies and, eventually, the neighboring supermassive black holes at the heart of those galaxies.

“Supermassive black holes are big, but they’re really tiny compared to their galaxies,” Grier said. “That doesn’t mean they can’t ‘talk’  to each other, and this is a way for one to talk to the other that we will have to account for when we model the effects of these kinds of black holes.”

The team’s research was published in June in The Astrophysical Journal.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Space.com – https://www.space.com/supermassive-black-holes-winds-quasars

Tags: blackscienceSupermassive
Previous Post

Florida family files claim with NASA after ISS space junk crashes into home

Next Post

IND vs AUS Highlights, T20 World Cup 2024 Super Eight: India Qualify For Semi-Finals With 24-Run Win

Nasdaq-listed Verb Technology to build $558 million TON treasury, rebrand as TON Strategy Co. – The Block

Nasdaq-Listed Verb Technology to Build $558 Million TON Treasury and Rebrand as TON Strategy Co

August 5, 2025

USA Wrestling and Pure&Clean Sports continue partnership to champion athlete safety and advance the sport – USA Wrestling

August 5, 2025
Archived natural DNA samplers reveal four decades of biodiversity change across the tree of life – Nature

Four Decades of Biodiversity Uncovered Through Archived Natural DNA Samplers

August 4, 2025
Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars – Yahoo Home

Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars – Yahoo Home

August 4, 2025
Science and the courts need to better distinguish between correlations and causation – Genetic Literacy Project

Science and the courts need to better distinguish between correlations and causation – Genetic Literacy Project

August 4, 2025
Adidas Relies on ‘Brand Heat’ in Lifestyle Footwear for Future Growth – WWD

Adidas Relies on ‘Brand Heat’ in Lifestyle Footwear for Future Growth – WWD

August 4, 2025
Team USA sets new relay record at swim worlds and Katie Ledecky wins again – CBS News

Team USA Smashes Relay Record at Swim Worlds as Katie Ledecky Reigns Supreme Again

August 4, 2025
Dow futures reverse higher as recession alarm bells jolt Wall Street awake from dreams of a gravity-defying economy – Fortune

Dow Futures Soar Amid Growing Recession Concerns Shaking Wall Street Confidence

August 4, 2025
Hank Hill returns to a changed world in new ‘King of the Hill’ episodes – New Haven Register

Hank Hill Navigates a Bold New World in Thrilling New ‘King of the Hill’ Episodes

August 4, 2025
How Trump’s Immigration Policies Are Impacting Health Care – Pulmonology Advisor

How Trump’s Immigration Policies Are Shaping the Future of Health Care

August 4, 2025

Categories

Archives

August 2025
MTWTFSS
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jul    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (754)
  • Economy (779)
  • Entertainment (21,656)
  • General (16,286)
  • Health (9,816)
  • Lifestyle (787)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (778)
  • Politics (788)
  • Science (15,992)
  • Sports (21,275)
  • Technology (15,757)
  • World (760)

Recent News

Nasdaq-listed Verb Technology to build $558 million TON treasury, rebrand as TON Strategy Co. – The Block

Nasdaq-Listed Verb Technology to Build $558 Million TON Treasury and Rebrand as TON Strategy Co

August 5, 2025

USA Wrestling and Pure&Clean Sports continue partnership to champion athlete safety and advance the sport – USA Wrestling

August 5, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version