Astrophysicists stumble upon an entirely new population of threads at the centre of Milky Way galaxy

According to a study conducted by an international team of astrophysicists, a groundbreaking discovery has been made in the center of the Milky Way. The researchers have identified a completely new population of threads at the heart of this massive galaxy.

In the early 1980s, Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, a renowned radio astronomer from Northwestern University, first observed enormous one-dimensional filaments hanging vertically near Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole located at the galaxy’s center.

Now, several decades later, Yusef-Zadeh and his collaborators have come across an entirely different set of threads. These new threads, in contrast to the vertical ones, are much shorter and arranged horizontally or radially. They resemble spokes radiating outward from the black hole, reminiscent of the dots and dashes in Morse code.

Although there are certain similarities between the two sets of filaments, Yusef-Zadeh believes that they likely have different origins. The vertical filaments span across the galaxy, reaching heights of up to 150 light-years, while the horizontal filaments appear only on one side of Sagittarius A* and form a pattern resembling Morse code.

Yusef-Zadeh expressed his surprise at this discovery, stating that finding a new population of structures pointing towards the black hole was unexpected. The researchers had to conduct extensive work to confirm the existence of these filaments and establish their connection to the black hole’s outflow. By studying these filaments, they hope to gain insights into the spin and orientation of the black hole’s accretion disk.

Having focused on vertical filaments for decades, Yusef-Zadeh was taken aback by the presence of their horizontal counterparts, estimated to be around six million years old. The vertical filaments are oriented perpendicular to the galactic plane, while the horizontal filaments are parallel to the plane but extend towards the galaxy’s center, where the black hole is located. The vertical filaments exhibit magnetic and relativistic properties, whereas the horizontal filaments emit thermal radiation.

While vertical filaments involve particles moving close to the speed of light, horizontal filaments appear to accelerate thermal material within a molecular cloud. The number of vertical filaments is in the several hundred range, while horizontal filaments are limited to just a few hundred.

Yusef-Zadeh suggests that these filaments likely originated from an outflow event that occurred a few million years ago, involving an interaction between the outflowing material and nearby objects. He emphasizes the importance of ongoing observations, continually challenging existing ideas, and refining analysis to further understand these phenomena.