New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory provide evidence for powerful winds blowing away from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy. This discovery indicates that “average” supermassive black holes may play an important role in the evolution of the galaxies in which they reside.
For years, astronomers have known that a supermassive black hole grows in parallel with its host galaxy. And, it has long been suspected that material blown away from a black hole — as opposed to the fraction of material that falls into it — alters the evolution of its host galaxy.
A key question is whether such “black hole blowback” typically delivers enough power to have a significant impact. Powerful relativistic jets shot away from the biggest supermassive black holes in large, central galaxies in clusters like Perseus are seen to shape their host galaxies, but these are rare. What about less powerful, less focused galaxy-scale winds that should be much more common?
“We’re more interested here in seeing what an average-sized supermassive black hole can do to its galaxy, not the few, really big ones in the biggest galaxies,” said Dan Evans, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.“We have shown that even these middle-of-the-road black holes can pack a punch,” said Evans. “I think the upshot is that these black holes are anything but ordinary. In the future, our own galaxy’s black hole may undergo similar activity, helping to shut down the growth of new stars in the central region of the Milky Way.”
