Astronomers report detecting evidence of a “wind” blowing from Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, after decades of searching. The finding comes after new observations provide a clearer view of Sgr A*’s surrounding environment, allowing researchers to identify the wind’s imprint for the first time in a sufficiently unobscured way. The wind is understood to be driven by material moving toward the black hole: gas falling in can be accelerated to high speeds, generating pressure that can push some infalling material back outward.
Researchers note that Sgr A* is relatively quiet compared with bright active galactic nuclei seen in other galaxies, and it has lower feeding rates. Tracing a wind has been difficult because of the black hole’s modest activity and because observations from Earth must look through the Milky Way’s plane, which contains gas, dust, and ionized structures that obscure the central region. The study also reports that the detected molecular gas lies very close to Sgr A*, supporting the idea that the black hole’s behavior fits patterns seen around other supermassive black holes. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
