Astrophysicists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico examined the source of powerful bursts of radiation emanating from the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, 26.7 thousand light years from Earth. According to scientists, gamma-ray emissions come from a clump of matter orbiting the Sagittarius A* black hole at about 30% of the speed of light. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Astrophysics.
This discovery could solve a mystery that has baffled astronomers for the past two years. Gamma ray pulses from Sagittarius A* were first discovered in 2021. However, the rays cannot come directly from a supermassive black hole, because neither light nor any form of radiation in the Universe can overcome its formidable gravity.
An eruption of such a force cannot come from Sagittarius A*’s accretion disk (a structure composed of dust and gas) because our galaxy’s main black hole is surrounded by very little matter and consumes it extremely slowly. However, a certain source continued to send gamma rays from there to Earth at 76-minute intervals.
Scientists analyzed publicly available data for patterns in the periodicity of gamma radiation and concluded that the rays must be emitted by a cluster of gas orbiting Sagittarius A* at 320 million km/h.
“The overlap of multiwavelength periodicity in x-rays and gamma rays points to a single physical mechanism producing them,” the paper says.
This discovery will help scientists better understand processes in the environment around supermassive black holes such as Sagittarius A*.
Previous researchers I learnedHow fast the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is spinning.