NASA has offered astronomers a brand-new, ultra-detailed look at the edge of a supermassive black hole, and the results could finally crack a decades-old puzzle in galactic science.
The focus of this breakthrough is the Circinus Galaxy, located 13 million light-years from Earth, where a ravenous black hole continuously spews out radiation into space.
For years, the brilliant clouds of hot gas surrounding the black hole made it nearly impossible to see the finer details of what was happening at its core.
But thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists can now observe the complex and powerful forces at the very edge of this cosmic giant.
How Supermassive Black Holes Feed and Shine
Black holes like the one in Circinus stay active by devouring matter from their surrounding galaxies.
As this material falls inward, it forms a dense doughnut-shaped structure called a torus.
From the inner walls of this torus, matter spirals down into an accretion disk, a whirling vortex of material that heats up through friction until it glows intensely.
Some of the energy from this process is blasted outwards along the black hole’s poles in the form of outflows, or jets, which were long assumed to be the main source of the observed infrared radiation.
But past telescopes lacked the resolution to confirm where all the energy was truly coming from.
A New Technique Reveals Hidden Details
To tackle this, the team used a technique called aperture masking interferometry on the JWST, effectively turning the 6.5-meter telescope into a virtual 13-meter observatory.
By observing through seven tiny hexagonal holes in a special cover, astronomers were able to filter out interfering starlight and separate the infrared emissions of the torus from those of the outflows.
Dr Enrique Lopez–Rodriguez of the University of South Carolina, lead author on the study, explained that this is the first time infrared interferometry has been used to observe a galaxy beyond the Milky Way, producing an unprecedented view of the Circinus black hole’s core.
A Surprising Reversal of Expectations
The results completely upend previous models: about 87 percent of the infrared emissions from hot dust in Circinus originate very close to the black hole, with the outflow contributing less than one percent.
“Since the 90s, it has not been possible to explain excess infrared emissions that come from hot dust at the cores of active galaxies,” Dr Lopez–Rodriguez said.
The findings show that much of the energy comes from the torus, not the outflows as scientists had assumed.
This insight solves one longstanding mystery but also raises new questions about the universe’s countless other supermassive black holes.
Circinus’ accretion disk was relatively moderate in brightness, so the torus dominated its emissions.
Brighter black holes may still behave differently, requiring more case studies to fully understand these cosmic giants.
The Bigger Picture of Black Hole Formation
Black holes are regions of space with gravity so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape.
Supermassive black holes, found at the centers of massive galaxies, may form from collapsing giant gas clouds or from massive stars that exhaust their fuel and collapse.
Some seeds of these black holes merge over time, creating the colossal objects astronomers observe today.
When giant stars die, they often explode as supernovae, dispersing outer layers of gas into space, feeding the growth of black holes and shaping the galaxies around them.
Looking Ahead
With this new technique, astronomers can now study any black hole bright enough for the JWST’s aperture masking interferometer.
Dr Lopez–Rodriguez noted that building a statistical sample of a dozen or two dozen black holes will be essential to understanding how mass in accretion disks and outflows relates to black hole power, potentially unlocking the secrets of galaxy evolution.
NASA’s new observations not only give us the sharpest look yet at a black hole’s edge but also open a window into the mechanics of some of the most extreme objects in the universe.
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