The Circinus galaxy, located 13 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Circinus. It’s recently elucidated some really compelling qualities of its supermassive black hole. A recent study led by Ph.D. student Wout M. Goesaert from Leiden University has demonstrated that gaseous material flows toward the black hole through two spiral arms embedded in the galaxy’s disk. This finding provides a window into the complicated physical processes that control black hole accretion and the evolution of galactic bulges.
Not formally discovered until 1977, the Circinus galaxy was behind the thick disk of the Milky Way until astronomers first recognized it. The black hole at its center is anything but passive. Shark feeding It’s not just sucking in matter, though. The researchers discovered gas streaming to the black hole at remarkable speeds up to 150,000 kilometers per hour. Only a fraction—at most 12%—of this gas actually disappears into the black hole, indicating a more complex interaction than previously understood.
Research Insights
Utilizing observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in 2023, Wout Goesaert and his team tracked the movement of gas in the spiral arms. The result shows that gas is falling into the black hole. A large fraction of it is blown out before it can fall to the event horizon. This indicates that the feeding process of supermassive black holes is a more complex affair than previously assumed.
“In cartoons, you sometimes see a disk of gas disappearing into a black hole as if it were a whirlpool. If there is no supply channel, such a disk will continue to spin around at a decent distance forever,” explained Wout Goesaert. His perspective underscores the need to understand how stuff accumulates onto these cosmic behemoths.
Violette Impellizzeri, a co-researcher on the project, had some early worries about conflicting research. “As Wout started his research in our team, another group published a paper on the same data and the same black hole. That worried us,” she stated. Despite these drawbacks, the team persisted, working to understand the complexity of their results. “We decided not to give up and explored deeper into the subject, searching for more details,” she added.
Future Prospects
The implications of this research go beyond just the Circinus galaxy. The research adds to a growing body of work that seeks to understand how supermassive black holes affect their environments. Future observations from the Event Horizon Telescope and the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is currently under construction in Chile, may provide further insights into these dynamics.
Researchers are optimistic that these advanced telescopes will unveil additional details about gas flows and feeding mechanisms in various galaxies. This would have great potential to make new discoveries about how galaxies and their supermassive central black holes evolve together.