Astronomers have discovered a cloud near the event horizon of a black hole in the center of the galaxy

(ORDO NEWS) — Near the center of the galaxy, a giant gas and dust cloud has been found orbiting a black hole. Reported by the European Southern Observatory.

At the center of the Milky Way is the radio source Sagittarius A*. It is a four billion solar supermassive black hole surrounded by a much more massive cloud of matter.

“We believe we have discovered a large cloud of gas that revolves around Sgr A* in an orbit comparable in diameter to the distance between the Sun and Mercury.

This accumulation of matter makes one revolution in just 70 minutes. This means that it is moving at a speed of 30% of the speed of light,” said Maciej Wilgus from the Radio Astronomy Institute in Bonn, one of the authors of the study.

These observations were made using the ALMA radio telescope located in the Chilean mountains. This cloud is heated to extremely high temperatures and consists of dust and gas, and therefore emits intensely in the X-ray and IR range.

Such heating occurs due to powerful magnetic fields surrounding the black hole. The distance from it to the point of singularity is 70 million kilometers.

In the future, the authors plan to confirm the detection of this object and use it to study the magnetic field of black holes, which heats it up.

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