Using the space telescopeJames Webb(JWST), an international team of astronomers led by Université de Montréal Department of Physics professor Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo has captured one of the clearest views yet of how a supermassive black hole powers itself, bringing scientists closer to solving a long-standing astrophysical mystery. The results of this work were published inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Self-regulating black holes
Almost every large galaxy in the Universe has a supermassive black hole at their center whose mass reaches millions or even billions of times that of the Sun. When these black holes actively attract surrounding matter, they ignite like true cosmic engines, projecting powerful jets of energy capable of sculpting the entire galaxy around them, slowing the birth of new stars and influencing the growth of the galaxy over time. Astronomers call these types of black holes active galactic nuclei.
Despite extensive research, a stubborn conundrum has persisted for years. If jets from an active galactic core heat the surrounding gas, this should, in principle, cut off the supply of matter to the black hole. How then does it continue to nourish itself and grow?
The main hypothesis is that the gas eventually cools, condenses into long, thin filaments, and then falls toward the center of the galaxy. The supermassive black hole powers the process that powers it itself; it is a self-regulating system. Despite decades of research, directly observing how these filaments move toward the black hole has remained extremely difficult. This link, a missing link of sorts, is precisely what this new study reveals.
From a spiral to a rotating disk
The team pointed the JWST at the galaxy NGC 4696, the central galaxy of the Centaurus Cluster, a dense group of galaxies located about 145 million light-years from Earth and one of the best laboratories for studying the mechanisms of active galactic nuclei.
Previous images from the space telescopeHubblehad discovered a curious spiral of gas near the central black hole of the galaxy, butHubblecould only capture a snapshot of the gas's location, without revealing its movement.
Following nearly eight hours of observing time using JWST's NIRSpec instrument, the team produced detailed maps of the movement of gas within the black hole's sphere of influence, with a resolution fine enough to distinguish structures about 30 light-years away, representing a tiny portion of a galaxy hundreds of thousands of light-years wide.