Researchers have identified that the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center is highly active, consistently emitting a stream of flares into space. A recent study utilizing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a variety of light emanating from Sagittarius A*, the black hole’s accretion disk, which is a ring of material spinning rapidly around it.
Some flares resemble short candle flickers lasting just seconds, while others are massive eruptions emitting several bright jets daily. These new findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, may aid astrophysicists in better understanding black holes and their interactions with surrounding gas and dust, potentially offering insights into the Milky Way’s evolution.
Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, the Northwestern University astronomer leading the study, described the observations as a constantly changing, bubbling brightness followed by unexpected bursts of light, noting the lack of discernible patterns, suggesting randomness.
This study, described by scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore as the most detailed to date on Sagittarius A*, involved 48 hours of observation over a year in eight to 10-hour stints. Approximately half a century ago, black holes were largely theoretical, yet today they are widely recognized, with supermassive black holes being photographed using large, synchronized radio dishes on Earth.
It is understood that falling into a black hole results in certain death as any matter nearing past a point of no return gets swallowed. Yet, scientific observations have noted unusual behavior at the edges of black holes’ accretion disks, where some material may be rerouted. This results in high-energy particles being ejected outward as jets in opposite directions, though the mechanism remains unclear.
The Webb telescope’s data show brightness changes over short timescales suggesting they stem from the black hole’s inner disk. Yusef-Zadeh theorizes that the strongest flares resemble magnetic reconnection events, whereas the shorter bursts may result from minor disturbances in the accretion disk, akin to solar flares when the sun’s magnetic field is disrupted.
The next research phase will involve observing Sagittarius A* for extended periods without interruption to determine if the flares are repetitive or spontaneous.
