2 Superhot Columns Of X Ray Emitting Plasma Appear At The Galactic Center

The big black hole at the center of earth’s galaxy is again in news. Life of the Milky Way revolves around this bright and hot space object. The recent news states that this famous black hole might have couple of chimneys in it. This news came in the journal named Nature.

A research was conducted where the scientists observed that there were X-ray emissions from the black hole. These emissions came from 2 unique structures which were not observed earlier. This X- ray plasma came from 2 sides of the hole, one from the northern end and the other from the southern end. This is the situation for hundreds of light years, in both north and south directions.

Gabriele Ponti, who is the lead author in the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) informed their team, defined these unique structures as chimneys. The study was carried out in Italy. Researchers looked into 750 hours of X-ray plasma emissions to come to this conclusion. These X-ray observations had been captured by XMM Newton and Chandra telescope. The team framed an X-ray map. This reflected the center of the black hole. The map also includes the chimney plumes which are located at both ends of the Sagittarius A; this is the bright fountain of radioactive waves flowing over the super- massive black hole.

As per the research paper, the north and south chimneys have extended for about 522 light years. Each of these chimneys gets hotter and denser when these come close to the Sagittarius A. The researchers are still searching for the original source of this plasma emission. Though the origin is not clear, the exit of these chimneys is known. These have been also termed as the exit pipes by the researchers. They also observed large Fermi Bubbles which existed for about 326 light years.