Black holes are scary enough not to look further into the depths of the Universe. These savages beasts rest at the galaxies’ centers, weighing millions of times the mass of the Sun. They’re also the most mysterious objects that continue to puzzle scientists’ work for decades.
However, the recent discovery might leave you in awe.
Here is what you need to know.
How to Feed Black Holes
A team of researchers has found a way to feed black holes. As intriguing as it might sound, we have enough proof to support that.
Researchers have detected some long narrow dust filaments that encircle and feed the black holes in the galaxies’ centers. And that’s not all. Those filaments could be the reason for the darkening of the cores of many other galaxies when their nuclear black holes are active.
Study insights and findings
The team used data from the popular Hubble Space Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) in Chile, and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the ESO (the European Southern Observatory). Next, they got a direct visualization of the nuclear feeding of a black hole by dust filaments in a galaxy dubbed NGC 1566.
Below, you can see how a black hole is fed:
“This group of telescope has given us a completely new perspective of a supermassive black hole, thanks to the imaging at high angular resolution and the panoramic visualization of its surroundings,” stated Almudena Prieto, the lead author of the paper.
The combined pictures obtained from the space telescope are genuinely fantastic. They display how the dust filaments divide and go to the galaxy’s center. There, they move and whirl in a spiral around the black hole right before they’re engulfed by it.
The recent discovery is only the beginning. Researchers aim to explore the black holes more and find other intriguing stuff.