{"id":66590,"date":"2024-10-29T17:26:01","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T17:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/liberia\/all-news\/mysterious-newly-discovered-milky-way-threads-bewilder-scientists"},"modified":"2024-10-29T18:01:59","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T18:01:59","slug":"mysterious-newly-discovered-milky-way-threads-bewilder-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/liberia\/all-news\/mysterious-newly-discovered-milky-way-threads-bewilder-scientists","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Newly Discovered Milky Way Threads Bewilder Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Liberia. <\/strong><\/span>Astronomers hope that the discovery will help them understand more about the spin of the Milky Way\u2019s central supermassive black hole, located about 26,000 light-years from the Earth.<\/p>\n

There are hundreds of horizontal cosmic threads<\/b> that point towards the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, a new study has revealed.<\/p>\n

The astronomers suggested that at the time, outflow from Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way\u2019s central supermassive black hole<\/b>, interacted with surrounding materials, which finally resulted in emergence of the horizontal galaxy filaments, each of which stretches five to ten light years through space.<\/p>\n

Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the study\u2019s lead author, said in a statement that “It was a surprise to suddenly find a new population of structures that seem to be pointing in the direction of the black hole.”<\/p>\n

“We found that these filaments are not random but appear to be tied to the outflow of our black hole,” the scientist pointed out, admitting that he himself was also “actually stunned” when he saw these structures.<\/p>\n

Yusef-Zadeh also said that he and his colleagues \u201chave always been thinking about vertical filaments and their origin,” adding, “I’m used to them being vertical. I never considered there might be others along the plane [of the galaxy].”<\/p>\n

He was referring to his team\u2019s findings about 40 years ago, when the astrophysicists discovered a population of nearly 1,000 one-dimensional vertical filaments near the galaxy\u2019s center. As compared to horizontal threads, vertical ones were much larger at up to 150 light years long each.<\/p>\n

The latest discovery was made with the help of the world\u2019s most sensitive MeerKAT radio telescope <\/b>based in the Northern Cape of South Africa. Yusef-Zadeh stressed in this regard that \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for MeerKAT these [new structures] wouldn\u2019t have been detected; we\u2019ve never been able to dedicate that amount of time to the center of the galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also made it clear that studying the cosmic threads will help astronomers shed more light on the spin of the Milky Way\u2019s central black hole.<\/p>\n

Yusef-Zadeh was echoed by Erika Hamden, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, who was cited by US media as saying that the study related to the black hole located about 26,000 light-years from Earth are \u201creally exciting\u201d and \u201cdemonstrate how beautiful the universe is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sagittarius A* \u201cis the closest supermassive black hole to us, but it\u2019s relatively quiet and therefore somewhat difficult to really study. But this work provides evidence that it was recently ejecting quite a lot of energy into space in the form of a jet and conical outflow,\u201d Hamdem concluded.<\/p>\n\r\n