Sagittarius A* Wind Detected in Milky Way Center

Astronomers have resolved a 50-year-old mystery by detecting evidence of a wind emanating from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The discovery, reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides the first clear view of how this supermassive black hole interacts with its immediate surroundings.

The research team, led by Mark Gorski and Lena Murchikova of Northwestern University, identified a massive, cone-shaped cavity in a cloud of cold molecular gas located within about three light-years of the black hole. This void, which points directly at Sagittarius A*, is believed to be the imprint of a hot wind pushing outward. The team used over five years of observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescopes in Chile, combined with data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, to make the finding.

The analysis ruled out other potential causes, such as winds from nearby stars. Researchers calculated that the energy required to create the cavity exceeds what could be provided by stellar sources, pointing instead to the influence of the supermassive black hole. Data from Chandra confirmed the...