Scientists spot gargantuan 'X-ray chimneys' at the center of Milky Way

From end to end, the newly discovered gamma-ray bubbles extend 50,000 light-years, or roughly half of the Milky Way's diameter, as shown in this illustration. Hints of the bubbles' edges were first observed in X-rays (blue) by ROSAT, a Germany-led mission operating in the 1990s. The gamma rays mapped by Fermi (magenta) extend much farther from the galaxy's plane.

Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The monster Black hole that anchors our galaxy is situated safely 28,000 light years away from earth. This is a good thing because the region around this supermassive black hole is overflowing with dangerous radiation and fragmented stars. 

Astronomers observing the center of Milky Way have recently spotted some unusual features that explain how violent this area is. They have observed a pair of gargantuan "X-ray chimneys" that expel matter and energy building up around the black hole.

UCLA professor of astronomy and astrophysics Mark Morris, who contributed to the research, likens the features to exhaust vents, bleeding off energy from the galaxy in form of X-rays.

An international team of researchers looked the black hole, known as Sagitarrius A*, in an effort to learn more about star formation in the Milky Way. All the galaxies foster the development of stars, but the rate of formation of new stars can vary wildly. One significant factor in star formation is the fate of matter and energy spiraling towards a galaxy's central black hole.

Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists have recently discovered a gigantic, mysterious structure in our galaxy. This feature looks like a pair of bubbles extending above and below our galaxy's center. Each lobe is 25,000 light-years tall and the whole structure may be only a few million years old. 

Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

To track the material that blasted out around the Saggitarrius A*, scientists turned to the ESA's XMM-Newton satellite. This X-ray Observatory was launched 20 years ago, but is still going strong. The team used data from 2012, 2016 as well as 2018 to see what the black hole was doing with all the stars getting smashed to bits in the general vicinity.

According to the researchers, Saggitarrius A* produces "chimneys" of X-rays that extend north to South from the disk of the Galaxy. The structure are more appropriately known as "Fermi bubbles", massive cavities carved out of the gas cloud surrounding the galaxy. 

Both the North and south chimneys start within 160 light years of the black hole, extending outward about 25,000 light years. That's almost the distance of Saggitarrius A* from earth.

Sagitarrius A* is about 4 million times the size of our sun, but other galaxies have even much larger central black holes. The study our own Milky way's center with closeup, could provide insights into how these more energetic galaxies work.

Understanding how energy moves through the chimneys into surrounding space could help explain why some regions become rich in star formation, while others are relatively barren.