NASA Finds Strong Evidence for High Energy Particle Jets Blasting from Milky Way

New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have made the best case yet that Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, is producing a jet of high-energy particles.

Prior studies had suggested the presence of these energy jets, but the body of research has been contradictory and a definitive conclusion has yet to be reached.

Nanjing University's Zhiyuan Li, the lead author of the new research said the quest to find energy jets associated with the Milky Way black hole, also known as Sgr A*, has been going on for decades.

"Our new observations make the strongest case yet for such a jet," Li said.

These high-energy jets are found throughout the universe; they are produced by young stars and by black holes a thousand times larger than the one at the center of the Milky Way. The energy jets play a role in regulating the formation of new stars as well as in transporting energy away from the center of a galaxy.

"We were very eager to find a jet from Sgr A* because it tells us the direction of the black hole's spin axis. This gives us important clues about the growth history of the black hole," said Mark Morris of the University of California at Los Angeles, a co-author of the study, which is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Sagittarius A*'s spin axis is is pointing in one direction, parallel to the rotation axis of the Milky Way, which astronomers suggest means that gas and dust have been being pulled into Sagittarius A* for the past 10 billion years.

X-rays detected by Chandra and radio emissions observed by the VLA suggest that the energy jet appears to be running into gas near the black hole.

"The two key pieces of evidence for the jet are a straight line of X-ray emitting gas that points toward Sgr A* and a shock front -- similar to a sonic boom -- seen in radio data, where the jet appears to be striking the gas. Additionally, the energy signature, or spectrum, in X-rays of Sgr A* resembles that of jets coming from supermassive black holes in other galaxies," NASA wrote in a statement.

Astronomers believe that energy jets from Sgr A* are the source of giant bubbles of high-energy particles extending out from the Milky Way first detected in 2008. The latest research supports this theory.