X-Ray Wind From Black Hole Blows Away Star Forming Materials

The image you see here is an artist's representation of what scientists think it would look like closer to a black hole as the raw materials needed to make stars are blown away from the black hole. A new study was published this week that shows a link between the X-Ray wind created by supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy and the dispersal of raw materials that could be used to form stars.NASA was kind enough to put together a video that shows how it believes the process would look if we were close enough to see the black hole in action. To gather the data needed to make the video NASA used the Herschel Space Observatory and the X-ray Imaging Spectrometer on the Suzaku astronomy satellite.

Using those tools, scientists peered into a galaxy called F11119+3257 that is about 2.3 billion light years away. The center of that galaxy has a supermassive black hole that is as massive as 16 suns. Researchers found that gas is racing out from the center of the black hole at a speed of 170 million mph and creating what is known as an x-ray wind.

The wind is caused by superheated conditions around the black hole accretion disk as it consumes the gas around it. The outflow from this black hole is believed to extend up to 1000 light years away from the galaxy center. This discovery gives new insight into how black holes are connected to star formation.

SOURCE: Cnet