Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Gases around black holes form dynamic fountains, not rigid donuts

By

Recent research performed using observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile and computer simulations is shedding light on the nature of black holes. The ALMA was used to observe supermassive black holes, and in particular the ring of gas that surrounds them. It was previously thought that these rings of gas formed a donut-type shape, with the black hole in the middle. But now it seems that the gases around the black hole are in constant circulation, forming a shape more like a water fountain than a donut.

Supermassive black holes are commonly found at the center of galaxies, providing a point around which other stars rotate. Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) wanted to know more about how matter moves around these black holes, and whether it falls into the black hole or builds up around the event horizon. To study this, they looked to the Circinus Galaxy, about 14 million light-years away from us, and observed a supermassive black hole located there.

Recommended Videos

The NAOJ team tested what was happening around the black hole by producing a computer simulation of how gases would fall towards a black hole, then comparing this simulation to the data from the Circinus Galaxy. They found that the gases did not form the expected rigid donut shape, but in fact formed a more dynamic structure which starts when colder gas falls towards the black hole, then this gas warms as it approaches the black hole, and some of this warmed gas is then expelled outwards away from the disk. This expelled gas then falls back towards the disk and the cycle begins again.

Artist’s impression of the gas motion around the supermassive black hole in the center of the Circinus Galaxy. The three gaseous components form the long-theorized “donut” structure: (1) a disk of infalling dense cold molecular gas, (2) outflowing hot atomic gas, and (3) gas returning to the disk. NAOJ

This finding shows that we were wrong to assume that the gases around black holes form a rigid donut structure, which could have a profound effect on our understanding of black holes in general. “Based on this discovery, we need to rewrite the astronomy textbooks,” said Takuma Izumi, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Uh-oh: Black hole up to 100 billion times the mass of the sun has vanished
This image of Abell 2261 contains X-ray data from Chandra (pink) showing hot gas pervading the cluster as well as optical data from Hubble and the Subaru Telescope that show galaxies in the cluster and in the background.

This image of Abell 2261 contains X-ray data from Chandra (pink) showing hot gas pervading the cluster as well as optical data from Hubble and the Subaru Telescope that show galaxies in the cluster and in the background. Astronomers used these telescopes to search the galaxy in the center of the image for evidence of a black hole, weighing between 3 and 100 billion times the Sun, that is expected to be there. No sign of this black hole was found, deepening a mystery about what is happening in this system. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/K. Gültekin ; Optical: NASA/STScI and NAOJ/Subaru; Infrared: NSF/NOAO/KPNO; Radio: NSF/NOAO/VLA

You'd think that it would be hard to lose one of the largest black holes in the universe. However, scientists are currently being puzzled by the apparent absence of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Abell 2261 galaxy cluster -- a monster that is estimated to weigh somewhere between 3 billion and 100 billion times the mass of the sun.

Read more
Hundreds of volcanoes spew sulfur into the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Io
Composite image showing Jupiter's moon Io in radio (ALMA), and optical light (Voyager 1 and Galileo). The ALMA images of Io show for the first time plumes of sulfur dioxide (in yellow) rise up from its volcanoes. Jupiter is visible in the background (Cassini image).

Jupiter's moon Io is a dramatic place -- even though it's just 1,131 miles across, or just a bit bigger than Earth's moon, it hosts over 400 active volcanoes, some of which are as large as 124 miles across. These volcanoes spew out sulfur gases that freeze on the moon's chilly surface and give it its distinctive yellow and orange color.

Another odd feature about Io is that it has an atmosphere, albeit an extremely thin one. At a billion times thinner than Earth's atmosphere, it's barely there, but it does exist and is composed mostly of sulfur from the volcanoes. But researchers weren't sure about how exactly this atmosphere formed, so recent research has used Earth-based telescopes to examine this puzzle.

Read more
Six galaxies trapped in cosmic web could explain supermassive black hole growth
This artist’s impression shows the central black hole and the galaxies trapped in its gas web.

Astronomers know that at the heart of most galaxies lies an enormous monster: A supermassive black hole, millions of times the mass of our sun. But they are still learning about how these beasts form and grow to such a large size.

Now, a group using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) has found a group of six galaxies trapped in a cosmic "spider's web" around a supermassive black hole, and investigating this oddity could help explain the formation of these colossal black holes.

Read more