Tag: Disk

Two Supermassive Black Holes are Merging

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A vast number of Galaxies in the Universe have a central black hole that is incredibly massive.  The Black Hole at the centre of the Milky Way, dubbed Sag A*, is estimated to have a mass as high as three Million Suns.  We generally can’t see black holes, but when they start to pull in matter from surrounding gas and dust clouds, the material forms a disk around the star.  This accretion disk can heat up to incredible temperatures and emit X-rays and other high energy light, allowing us to see where the black holes are.  Sometimes the light from...

2 Million Kph Wind from the Milky Way Core!

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I thought Hurricanes had powerful winds.   The strongest wind ever recorded was a gust up to 400 Kph near a tropical cyclone in Australia.  But Earthbound wind has nothing on Galactic wind. Around the time when our ancestors were just learning to walk upright, the core of the Milky Way Galaxy unleashed a blast of gasses and material at 2 Million Kph. Millions of years later, we see the aftermath of this eruption as two massive bubbles of material blown out above and below the galactic centre, at least 30,000 Light Years tall! The lobes were discovered by the...