Scientists may have solved the mystery of what causes massive "winds" of material that blast outward from some galaxies' centers.
Recent findings provide the first observational evidence that a supermassive black hole at the center of a large galaxy can power this type of massive molecular flow, the University of Maryland reported. The outflows remove large amounts of star-making gas from a galaxy's core, significantly influencing its structure.
A team of researchers looked at the galaxy IRAS F11119+3257, which has developed a supermassive black hole at its center. This type of black hole is called an active galactic nuclei (AGN), which consumes huge amounts of gas as opposed to the type found in our own Milky Way. AGN have intense radiation output that could power these winds.
"This is the first galaxy in which we can see both the wind from the active galactic nucleus and the large-scale outflow of molecular gas at the same time," said lead author Francesco Tombesi, an assistant research scientist in UMD's astronomy department who has a joint appointment at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center via the Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology.
Pat observations have described AGN winds and molecular outflows separately, but this is the first time they have been looked at simultaneously. While this galaxy is the only one of its kind known by scientists, the observations could help them know what they're looking for and discover more.
"These are not like normal spiral or elliptical galaxies. They're like train wrecks," said Sylvain Veilleux, a professor of astronomy at UMD and a fellow at the Joint Space-Science Institute (JSI) who is also a co-author of the study. "Two galaxies collided with each other, and it's now a single object. This train wreck provided all the material to feed the supermassive black hole that is now driving the huge galactic-scale outflow."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Nature.
