This gas – from which stars are formed – is fired into space like bullets.

We know that the center of our Milky Way can get rough and angry at times. This is where we find a large black hole known as Sagittarius A *. And the environment around it therefore sometimes has to endure hard. However, researchers are now puzzled. Because in a new study they discovered dense, cold gas fired like bullets from the heart of the Milky Way. The guilty? Nobody knows.

Heart of the Milky Way
Decades of research have enabled astronomers to visualize the chaotic and crowded region around Sagittarius A * at the center of our Milky Way. Our galactic center is about 26,000 light-years from Earth, and the supermassive black hole is at least 4 million times the mass of our sun. In addition, we now know that the region is buzzing with stars and is home to interstellar dust clouds. Strange things also happen more often around the black hole. For example, researchers discovered at the beginning of this year some bizarre objects. They look like gas, but act like stars.–

About ten years ago, researchers found the so-called Fermi bubbles at the heart of our galactic center near the black hole. These are two huge hot gas bubbles that come out of the heart of our galaxy. The fact that gas is flying around in it is in itself not very surprising. But that it is now about cold gas is. “We’ve seen hot gas being thrown from the center of our Milky Way, but dense, cold gas as well,” says researcher Naomi McClure-Griffiths. “This cold gas is much heavier, so it moves less easily.”

Bullets
The researchers discovered that this dense, cold gas is fired into space like bullets. And that is quite remarkable. “If a lot of mass is expelled, some of the material that can be used to form stars is also lost,” explains McClure-Griffiths. “And if a lot of gas is lost, at a certain point no stars can form at all. So it is quite exciting what will happen as the Milky Way loses more of this gas. ”

This is the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment telescope (APEX), which discovered the mysterious cold gas. Image: ESO / B. Tafreshi / TWAN (twanight.org)

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Exactly how this gas is emitted is a mystery. As mentioned, there is a black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. But at this point it is still unclear whether Sagittarius A * is to blame. Another theory is that the gas is spewed out by the thousands of massive stars that are in the center of the Milky Way. “We do not yet know who is responsible for the observed phenomenon,” says study leader Enrico Di Teodoro. “We are still looking for answers. But it gets more and more complicated as we learn more about it. ”

Scoop
Although it is the first time that we have encountered these mysterious lumps of cold gas in the heart of our own Milky Way Galaxy, researchers have observed similar events in other galaxies. But unfortunately we are not getting any wiser. Distant galaxies often have larger, more active supermassive black holes, where new stars emerge at high speed. Scientists think that this makes it easier for material to escape. Although they cannot quite put their finger on it yet. “These galaxies are very distant, so we cannot study these phenomena in detail,” says Di Teodoro. “Our own Milky Way Galaxy is almost like a laboratory. We can get really close and see phenomena up close. This allows us to understand how certain events work. ”

The new study raises new questions about what exactly is going on in our galactic center right now. While the observed gas emissions remain a mystery at this point, the research team argues that their findings have important implications for the future of our Milky Way Galaxy. However, it is a thorny problem; one that the research team is still busy with. More focused observations will hopefully provide more insight into exactly how the chunks of cold gas move and how they interact with the hot gas around them.