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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have imaged the structure of dust and gas around a distant supermassive black hole, literally discovering a “shock” feature.
The team discovered that the heating energy of this swirling cloud of gas and dust actually comes from collisions with jets of gas traveling at near-light speeds, or “shocks.” Previously, scientists had theorized that the energy heated by this dust comes from the supermassive black hole itself, making this an unexpected twist.
The Galactic home of this particular supermassive black hole is ESO 428-G14, an active galaxy located about 70 million light-years from Earth. The term “active galaxy” means that ESO 428-G14 has a central region or “active galactic nucleus” (AGN) that emits powerful and intense light across the electromagnetic spectrum due to the presence of a supermassive black hole that feeds heavily on matter. around him.
The AGN shock results came from members of the Galactic Activity, Torus, and Outflow Survey (GATOS) collaboration, which is using dedicated JWST observations to study the cores of nearby galaxies.
“There is much debate about how AGN transfer energy into their environment,” GATOS team member David Rosario, Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, said in a statement. “We didn’t expect to see radio jets doing this kind of damage. And yet here it is!”
Related: Dark matter could play ‘matchmaker’ for supermassive black holes
Unlocking the secret of a “noisy” black hole
All large galaxies are thought to have central supermassive black holes, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the sun, but not all of these black holes reside in AGNs.
Take the Milky Way, for example. The supermassive black hole of our galaxy Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is surrounded by so little matter that its “diet” of matter is equivalent to a person living on one grain of rice every million years. This makes Sgr A* a “quiet” black hole, with a mass equal to about 4.3 million solar masses, but it certainly has some noisy neighbors.
Take the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), located about 55 million light-years away. Not only is this M87* black hole much larger than the A* Score, with a mass of around 6.5 billion sun, but it is also surrounded by a huge amount of gas and dust, which it feeds on.
This matter cannot fall directly to M87* because it has angular momentum. that means it creates a flat swirling cloud of gas and dust around the supermassive black hole called an “accretion disk,” which it gradually nurtures.
Supermassive black holes don’t just sit in accretion disks passively waiting to be fed like a cosmic baby in a high chair. The massive gravitational influence of these cosmic titans generates enormous tidal forces in the accretion disk and creates a fissure that reaches temperatures as high as 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (10 million degrees Celsius).
This causes the accretion disk to glow brightly, powering some of the AGN’s light. The massive gravitational influence of these cosmic titans generates enormous tidal forces in the accretion disk, creating fissures heated to temperatures as high as 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (10 million degrees Celsius).
But that’s not all.
Like a misbehaving toddler, a supermassive black hole’s “food” is not going into its “mouth.” Powerful magnetic fields drive some of the material in accretion disks to the poles of the black hole in the process accelerating these charged particles to near the speed of light. Like your child throwing his food at you.
From the two poles of the black hole, this matter bursts out as parallel astrophysical jets. These jets are also accompanied by light emission across the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly powerful in radio waves.
As a result of these contributions, AGNs can be so bright that they exceed the combined light of all stars in the surrounding galaxy.
The dust surrounding AGNs can often block our view of their cores by absorbing visible light and other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Infrared light, however, can give the slip to this dust, and conveniently, the JWST sees the cosmos in infrared. That means the powerful space telescope is the perfect tool to peer into the center of AGNs.
When the GATO team did this for ESO 428-G14, they discovered that dust near the supermassive black hole is spreading out along its jet. This revealed an unexpected relationship between the jets and the dust, suggesting that these powerful outflows may be responsible for heating and shaping the dust.
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Further study of the connection between jets and dust around supermassive black holes may shed light on how these cosmic titans shape their galaxies, and how material is recycled in AGNs.
“The opportunity to work with exclusive JWST data and access the amazing images before anyone else is beyond thrilling,” said Houda Haidar, a PhD student in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics at Newcastle University. “I am very fortunate to be part of the GATOS team. It is a real privilege to work closely with leading experts in this field.”
The team’s research was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
