2023-11-03 11:46:36
The central region of the Circinus galaxy observed with ALMA. – ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. IZUMI ET AL.
MADRID, 3 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Japanese astronomers have managed to observe the nearby active galactic nucleus of the Circinus galaxy with the ALMA telescope, with extremely high resolution. approximately 1 light year.
This is the world’s first quantitative measurement of gas flows and their structures in the vicinity -up to the scale of a few light years- of a supermassive black hole in all gaseous phases, including plasma, atomic and molecular.
As a result, the team – led by Takuma Izumi, assistant professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) – has clearly captured the accretion flow heading towards the supermassive black hole and revealed that this accretion flow is generated by a physical mechanism known as “gravitational instability.”
Furthermore, the team also discovered that a significant part of this accretion flow is not used for the growth of the black hole. Instead, most of the gas is expelled from the vicinity of the black hole in the form of atomic or molecular flows and returns to the gas disk to participate again in an accretion flow towards the black hole: This gas recycling process is similar to a water fountain, as reported by the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) observatory it’s a statement.
These findings represent a crucial advance toward a comprehensive understanding of the growth mechanisms of supermassive black holes, according to the authors.
#Black #holes #recycle #gas #sources