They discovered that supermassive black holes can potentially harbor structures resembling cosmic shockwaves, the largest in the universe.
Researchers found that colossal shockwave-like structures could form near these black holes, essentially massive walls of gas swirling away from the intense gravitational pull of the black hole in an instant. They even speculate that supermassive black holes could be the birthplace of the largest shockwaves in the universe.
A supermassive black hole surrounded by dust and gas generates shockwaves on its outer edges.
Daniel Proga, an astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), stated, “The governing principles of phenomena here on Earth also apply to everything in the universe and even well beyond black holes.”
In this study, researchers examined the peculiar environment surrounding supermassive black holes and how gases and radiation interact within it.
Supermassive black holes sometimes have large gas and matter disks rotating around them, nourishing them over time in a combined system known as an active galactic nucleus. These systems often eject streams of matter, emitting bright X-ray beams above the disk, beyond the gravitational reach of the black hole. This X-ray radiation propels the outflowing streams of gas, known as “outflows.”
Researchers believe that this X-ray radiation may also help explain denser gas regions in the environment surrounding supermassive black holes, referred to as “clouds.”
“These clouds are hotter than the surface of the Sun and move at the speed of solar wind, so they are rather peculiar objects you wouldn’t want a plane to fly through,” said lead author Tim Waters, a postdoctoral researcher at UNLV and a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, in the same statement.
The research team demonstrated through computer simulations how, far enough from the black hole to lie beyond its reach, the atmospheric layer of the rotating disk around the black hole could begin to form gas and matter shockwaves. With the addition of outflows propelled by X-ray radiation, these shockwaves could develop into massive shockwave-like structures.
Researchers found that these swirling shockwaves could extend up to 10 light-years above the disk. Once these shockwave-like structures form, they would no longer be influenced by the gravitational force of the black hole.
Although no operational satellites can currently confirm their work, the research team hopes to reinforce their findings with future studies and anticipate astronomical observations. Additionally, observations of plasma near active galactic nuclei from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope align with the team’s discovery, according to a statement from NASA.
This work was published on June 15th in the Astrophysical Journal.