Black holes produce huge ‘UFO’ outbursts which are so powerful they can change the shape of entire galaxies, scientists from the European Space Agency have announced.
Sadly, ESA has not spotted swarms of unidentified flying objects swarming from the event horizon of a gigantic dark behemoth – which would be a miraculous sight because not even light can escape their greedy maws.
The UFOs are actually ‘ultra-fast outflows’ of highly ionised gas which travel at speeds up to 40% of the speed of light.
Astronomers spotted this ‘wind’ blasting from a supermassive hole at the centre of an active galaxy called PG 1114+445 and collated their findings in a new report.
‘These winds might explain some surprising correlations that scientists have known about for years but couldn’t explain,’ said lead author Roberto Serafinelli of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Milan, Italy, who carried out as part of a PhD at the University of Rome.
‘For example, we see a correlation between the masses of supermassive black holes and the velocity dispersion of stars in the inner parts of their host galaxies.
‘But there is no way this could be due to the gravitational effect of the black hole. Our study for the first time shows how these black hole winds impact the galaxy on a larger scale, possibly providing the missing link.’
The gigantic outflows have a huge effect on the ‘interstellar’ matter surrounding holes and ‘sweeps it away like a snowplough’. This matter can be involved in the formation of stars.
Scientists already knew about UFO blasts, but the new discovery relates a different type of outflow that has the speed of a UFO but the properties of a slower outburst called a ‘warm absorber’. These gusts of ‘wind’ have been spotted six times before and the new study brings us closer to understanding how they effect the formation of stars and galaxies.
The newly discovered forces push around the interstellar matter like ‘wind pushing boats in the sea’, cleaning away gas and stopping it from gathering around the hole.
ESA said supermassive black holes ‘transfer their energy into the surrounding environment through these outflows and gradually clear the central regions of the galaxy from gas, which could then halt star formation’.
Galaxies today produce stars ‘far less frequently than they used to in the early stages of their evolution’, it added.
‘It’s all very new science,’ added Serafinelli.
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