Newly Discovered Black Hole Filament Confuses Scientists with Horizontal Orientation

SPACE — Several decades ago, astronomers were surprised to find vertical filaments of light emanating from the central black hole of the Milky Way galaxy, our galaxy.

Now, the astronomer responsible for the discovery is seeing even more of the filament. This finding does not clarify past findings, on the contrary, it is even more confusing.

What baffles scientists is that these filaments are oriented horizontally. The filament also has some significant differences from previous findings.

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Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University discovered the initial filaments in the early 1980s around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The filament soars up to 150 light years and is found in the vicinity of the black hole.

This newly discovered filament was after he reduced the noise in images from the South African MeerKAT telescope. Those filaments are oriented in the same plane as Sagittarius A*.

These filaments are also much shorter. The total length is only about five to 10 light years. In addition, the new filament appears to be composed of heat energy. Meanwhile, vertical filaments consist of particles moving at the speed of light.

“I was really stunned when I saw this,” said Yusef-Zadeh, quoted from New Atlas.

Another key difference is that horizontal filaments reach Sagittarius A* only on one side of the black hole, unlike vertical filaments. The actual cause of the filament is currently unknown.

“We think the filament must have come from some kind of outflow from activity that happened a few million years ago,” Yusef-Zadeh said.

He suspected the filaments were the result of the outgoing material interacting with nearby objects. Yusef-Zadeh has studied the center of the Milky Way galaxy for decades. As well as the filaments, he also saw a giant radio emitting bubble and an unexpected stellar nursery very close to Sagittarius A*.

The new study was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.