The Discovery of an Active Wind from the Milky Way's Black Hole

2025/09/12 by Mark Gorski, Mark D. Gorski, E. M. Murchikova +4 · 3 voices
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae63cf

arxiv published 2025/09/12 · openalex publication_date 2026/06/04 · arxiv updated 2026/06/04 · openalex created_date 2026/06/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/05

Abstract

Every large galaxy has a black hole in its center. The interaction between the black hole and its host profoundly shapes galactic evolution and the Universe as a whole. The key features of this interaction are black hole jets -- or more generally, winds -- which every black hole must have. Despite the proximity and importance of our Galaxy's central black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the active wind from it has eluded scientists for over half a century. Here we report the discovery of a large active wind from Sgr A* using unprecedentedly deep (T_b ∼30 mK) and high angular resolution (<0.25") observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). We detect a large conical clearing in the cold molecular gas surrounding Sgr A* that is at least 1~parsec long and has a ~45 degree opening angle. The morphology and energetics of this structure are consistent with active clearing of gas by a hot wind from Sgr A*.

Citations

• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package
• Relativistic Jets from Active Galactic Nuclei
• The CO-to-H2 Conversion Factor
• Extragalactic Radio Jets
• CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications for Radio Astronomy
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• Galactic Winds
• Overionized plasma in the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East anchored by XRISM observations
• Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes
• The CO-to-H₂ conversion factor in the Milky Way's central parsec
• Interstellar medium phases and abundances in the central parsec: A JWST MIRI/MRS view of the Galactic center
• Universal Radial Scaling of Large-Scale Black Hole Accretion for Magnetically Arrested And Rocking Accretion Disks
• You Shall Not Pass! The propagation of low/moderate powered jets through a turbulent interstellar medium
• Overionized plasma in the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East anchored by XRISM observations
• Superluminal proper motion in the X-ray jet of Centaurus A
• Peering through the veil: near-infrared photometry and extinction for the Galactic nuclear star cluster

Discussions

• The Discovery of a Large Active Wind from the Milky Way's Central Black Hole: arxiv.org/abs/2509.10615 -> Missing wind from Milky Way’s giant black hole finally found: www.science.org/content/arti... [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• The Discovery of a Large Active Wind from the Milky Way's Central Black Hole arxiv.org/abs/2509.10615 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Here is the published version and archive versions of our paper: The Discovery of an Active Wind from the Milky Way’s Central Black Hole doi.org/10.3847/2041... arxiv.org/pdf/2509.10615 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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