A cold rain of gas is about to get devoured by a giant black hole
A black hole 1 billion light-years from Earth is about to chow down on a snack of cold gas and scientists are watching it happen.
The intergalactic gas clouds are literally pouring down toward the supermassive black hole at the center of an elliptical galaxy (named Abell 2597 Brightest Cluster Galaxy), according to a new study in the journal Nature this week.
These observations mark the first time researchers have seen a black hole feed like this, potentially changing the way astrophysicists understand how the mysterious dense objects grow.
You May Also Like
“Although it has been a major theoretical prediction in recent years, this is one of the first unambiguous pieces of observational evidence for a chaotic, cold rain feeding a supermassive black hole,” astronomer Grant Tremblay, co-author of the new study, said in a statement.
“It’s exciting to think we might actually be observing this galaxy-spanning rainstorm feeding a black hole whose mass is about 300 million times that of the sun.”
Scientists previously thought that black holes feed -- a process known as accretion -- by ingesting a relatively slow, regular trickle of hot gas from its host galaxy as it encounters the supermassive black hole.
These new results show that black holes can also chaotically binge on large amounts of gas in relatively short bursts.
The three gas clouds -- which are moving at about 1 million kilometers per hour and are the mass of 1 million suns -- getting set to feed this black hole appear to be intergalactic gas from the huge cluster of galaxies where the Abell 2597 Brightest Cluster Galaxy resides.
The gas between the galaxies in the cluster is very hot, according to the study, and can reportedly produce these huge gas clouds which feed the black hole of the giant galaxy.
"This very, very hot gas can quickly cool, condense, and precipitate in much the same way that warm, humid air in Earth's atmosphere can spawn rain clouds and precipitation," Tremblay said. "The newly condensed clouds then rain in on the galaxy, fueling star formation and feeding its supermassive black hole."
Tremblay and his team used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to gather data on about 50 galaxies in the Abell 2597 cluster for this study.
While these results are a compelling example of a previously unknown way for black holes to feed, there is still much work to be done.
Scientists hope to observe other gas clouds in danger of being gobbled up by a black hole.
"In an ideal world, I think what we need to do is do [observe] more galaxies because one example doesn't give you the whole story, and there could be a whole range of phenomena," astrophysicist Pepi Fabbiano, who is unaffiliated with the study, told Mashable in an interview.
"It would be nice to see this type of behavior in other galaxies... There may be cases where the accretion goes in a different way. To really understand the phenomenon we really need to look at more and more examples and see what the whole range is."
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
