Astronomers Discover Hurricane-Fast Black Hole Winds

The object, called J2318houses a black hole with an estimated mass of 1.7 billion times the mass of the Sun and is located about three billion light years of Earth. While this is a mass considered fairly typical for a supermassive black hole, the observed wind speeds are far from typical, he said. Patrick Hallresearcher at the University of York (Canada) and member of the team.

“In terms of speed, the wind from this quasar could be called a category hurricane. 79“, he said Lucas Seatonstudy leader and researcher at the University of York, in statement. “Each category of hurricane is about 20% faster than the category below. Calling it a Category 79 gives you an idea of ​​how fast it is, but of course, that wind is unlike anything on Earth.”

The origin of these winds is in the behavior of quasars. Large galaxies are thought to be home to a supermassive black hole at their centers, with masses millions or even billions of times that of the Sun.

But not all of these cosmic giants power quasars or emit such powerful winds. Quasars arise when these central black holes are surrounded by enormous amounts of gas and dust, called accretion diskswhich feed them gradually.

Black hole “winds”?

• Because these colossal masses generate intense gravitational forces, the accretion disks also experience strong tidal forces, which produce friction and make the system shine brightly across the electromagnetic spectrum. This radiation also pushes matter away from the disks, in the form of intense black hole “winds.”
• “In quasars, we often see winds of gas pushed away from the black hole by the quasar’s light,” Seaton said. “The wind in J2318 can be seen at wavelengths ultravioletwith speeds of up to 30% the speed of light. Even faster winds can be seen at wavelengths of x-raysbut J2318 is the fastest ever discovered at ultraviolet wavelengths”;
• The main difference in relation to terrestrial winds is the fact that black hole winds are driven by radiationby particles of light called photons what collide with the atomsnot by air pressure.

“Quasars emit so many photons that these small impulses add up and generate extreme speeds,” Seaton said. “The problem is that photons can also remove all electrons from atoms, making them invisible. How to push the gas to the speeds we see while keeping the carbon and silicon ions we observe intact… it’s a real puzzle!”

To try to resolve this question, the team turned to observational data from SDSS-IV Time-Domain Spectroscopic Survey and the SDSS-V Black Hole Mapperboth part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

Seaton explained that the system works as a prism: “Just as a rainbow spreads the Sun’s light into different wavelengths, colors, the SDSS spreads the light from certain stars, galaxies, and quasars into what we call their spectra. From these spectra, with practice, students learn to identify unusual quasars.”

These detailed spectra of J2318 revealed the quasar’s high-speed winds in the ultraviolet. Studying black hole winds like this is considered important for understanding how galaxies evolve, as these winds are how supermassive black holes exchange energy with their host galaxies. In particular, this energy can expel gas and dust, the raw material for star formation, stifling stellar birth in galaxies.

“These extreme outflows carry incredible amounts of energy that can affect surrounding galaxies. They act as a kind of missing link: the elusive feedback between the active central region of a galaxy and the rest of the galaxy,” he said Paola Rodríguez Hidalgoassociate professor at the University of Washington at Bothell.

“Although this process has been included in galaxy formation simulations for decades, there is still much work to be done to understand it through observations and ensure that simulations treat it correctly.”

The team and other astronomers must continue to look for high-speed black hole winds in ultraviolet radiation, but are not confident that they will find something as fast as J2318.

“It won’t be easy to find an ultraviolet outflow faster than that of J2318, but we are continuing this search from the near Universe to the farthest reaches of the Universe that we can see,” concluded Flores.