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Suddenly, the Milky Way’s central black hole is starting to look a little less like a weirdo. 

Astronomers have discovered a large cone-shaped void in gas surrounding Sagittarius A*, the galaxy’s supermassive black hole, that could solve a longstanding mystery. 

All active black holes should blow winds or jets of material back into space while they’re feeding, according to theory. That process is how supermassive black holes shape the galaxies around them. But no matter how hard astronomers have looked, they haven’t seen our black hole, dubbed Sgr A* for short, pushing anything back out. 

New images from a Northwestern University-led research team now suggest this cone tunneling through a fog of cold gas is evidence of that missing wind. It was almost literally an arrow pointing back at the black hole, said Mark Gorski, who co-led the study.

“This is the first time we’ve had a clean enough view to see the wind’s imprint,” Gorski said in a statement. “We looked at the data and said, ‘There it is. There is the thing that everybody’s been looking for for 50 years.'”

In reality, the discovery wasn’t that straightforward of an a-ha moment. Only after the team had overlaid their picture with data from NASA‘s Chandra X-ray Observatory did their observations begin to make sense. That gave them confidence the odd cone wasn’t just an imaging artifact, they said. 

“When you find something that no one has seen before, the first thought that runs through your mind is not ‘Oh my God, we made a discovery,'” said coauthor Elena Murchikova, in a statement. “It’s ‘Oh my God, what’s wrong with my analysis?'” 

Astronomers combined radio and X-ray data from the ALMA and Chandra-X telescopes to study the cone-shaped void near the Milky Way’s central black hole.
Credit: NASA / CXC / Northwestern / M. Gorski / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / ALMA / K. Arcand and P. Edmonds

Scientists believe virtually all large galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their core. These are regions millions to billions of times more massive than the sun. In fact, so much mass is packed into these small spaces that gravity becomes strong enough to prevent anything from escaping — even light. 

These black holes don’t just sit around, waiting for gas, dust, and stars to fall in, but they influence how their galaxies evolve around them by sucking in material and also blowing material that comes near their boundary — called the event horizon — back out.

By taking high-resolution observations with Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array in Chile over about five years, the team was able to map cold gas near the black hole in unprecedented detail. This ALMA image is 100 times deeper and 80 times sharper than previous maps, according to the researchers.

The cone stretches one to three light-years away from the black hole. The simplest explanation after careful consideration, according to the team’s findings published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, is that a fast, energetic stream of hot material has launched out of the black hole’s region, shoving colder gas in its path out of the way.

The ALMA radio telescopes in Chile spent five years observing the Milky Way’s central region to create high-resolution maps of surrounding cold gas.
Credit: ALMA /S. Longmore et al. / ESO / D. Minniti et al.

The team determined it would take more energy than could be provided by all the stars in that area to create the conic gap. The researchers estimated the wind has probably been blowing for 20,000 years or more.

Based on the image, the direction of Sgr A*’s wind seems somewhat tilted and uneven, which suggests it may be weak and mangled by surrounding gas as it travels.

How this feature has escaped the notice of previous researchers is not too surprising, the researchers said. In order to see into our own galaxy’s center, astronomers have to look through the plane of the Milky Way, which is thick with gas, dust, and ionized structures. Sgr A* may also be in a quieter lull, making the distant activity harder to spot.  

Some scientists have previously suggested that the lack of wind or jets could mean Sgr A* is an exotic black hole — an outlier among hundreds of billions of others like it. If anything, Murchikova is now convinced of the opposite. 

“It shows that our black hole is not unique, and our place in the universe is not unique,” she said.

By Douglas Helm
| Published 6 seconds ago

Chris Evans may be best known as Captain America in the MCU, but amidst his MCU tenure, he starred in a dark, post-apocalyptic thriller in 2013. That thriller was Snowpiercer, which also happens to be the English-language debut of South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho. The director and MCU star make a great combo in this film, which is now available to stream on Tubi.

Snowpiercer is adapted from the graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette with a screenplay co-written by Bong Joon-Ho and Kelly Masterson. The film takes place aboard the titular train, where the last of humanity lives after a climate disaster leaves the world completely frozen. The train is separated by class, with the lower class living toward the back of the train and the elites living near the front.

A Solid Entry Point To Bong Joon-Ho’s Work

Snowpiercer follows Chris Evans‘ character, Curtis Everett, who leads a rebellion against the elite class that fights their way to the front of the train. Along with Evans, the film stars Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Go Ah-sung, John Hurt, and Ed Harris. Interestingly, the film holds the claim of one of the most expensive South Korean productions ever, with a budget of $40 million.

Director Bong Joon-Ho would explore classism in a more grounded way in his incredible Oscar-winning film Parasite in 2019, but Snowpiercer is a great introduction to the filmmaker’s catalog that allows him to really make the most of a high budget and explore a more action-oriented style thriller.

As you might expect, the film was critically acclaimed and did fairly well at the box office, bringing in around $86.7 million worldwide. While Chris Evans is still in action mode in this film, he does get to flex his dramatic muscles more than usual with a more dour character than he typically plays.

Snowpiercer does a lot of things right and makes for a highly entertaining watch. While people may be tired of post-apocalyptic worlds, the setting of this film manages to stand apart thanks to its unique world-building. In the capable hands of Bong Joon-Ho, it certainly stands out from other sci-fi films of its ilk, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout.

Bong Joon-Ho Vs. Harvey Weinstein

While most studios would be content to let Bong Joon-Ho do whatever he wants, the director actually had to butt heads a few times with Harvey Weinstein after The Weinstein Company acquired the US distribution rights for Snowpiercer. The wide release of the film was initially delayed by Weinstein himself after he tried to get up to 25 minutes of scenes cut from the film, asking for more action and less dialogue.

A memorable scene involving a fish being gutted was one that Weinstein was particularly keen to cut, but Bong Joon-Ho hilariously lied that his father was a fisherman and the scene was in tribute to him to get Weinstein to keep it in.

Weinstein’s cut of Snowpiercer was eventually screened to a test audience, who hated it, which prompted Weinstein to ask for more cuts. However, Bong Joon-Ho’s original cut was test-screened later to much better reviews, which prompted a grassroots campaign to get his version released to US audiences.

The campaign, created by cinema activist Denise Heard-Bashur and supported by Tilda Swinton and John Hurt, was successful, and the uncut version would eventually get a wide release.

Le Transperceneige Vs. Snowpiercer

While the graphic novel that Snowpiercer is based on is well worth the read on its own, fans of it should not go in expecting a faithful adaptation of the novel. The setting is the same, but Bong Joon-Ho made the call to rewrite the story rather than trying to fit the long narrative of the graphic novel into the movie.

Of course, not everything has to be a 1:1 adaptation of the source material, and in the case of this film, it seems like it was the smart move to make it its own thing rather than adapt something that wouldn’t work as a film.

So, if you’re in the mood for a sci-fi thriller from one of the most interesting directors working today, then Snowpiercer should be the perfect film for you. Make sure to check it out on Tubi.