- Astronomers have resolved a 50-year-old mystery concerning Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, by finally detecting evidence of its wind.
- The breakthrough was achieved using five years of observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescopes in Chile, which provided an image 100 times deeper and 80 times sharper than previous maps.
- Researchers, led by Mark Gorski and Elena Murchikova, discovered a massive, cone-shaped region devoid of gas, which they concluded could only have been carved out by hot wind emanating from Sagittarius A*.
- This finding confirms that, like most black holes, Sagittarius A* produces a wind as it consumes surrounding material, despite previous difficulties in detecting it due to obscuring gas and dust.
- The observations indicate that Sagittarius A* is currently in a quieter phase, and the discovery helps scientists better understand the black hole's role in controlling the galaxy's growth and evolution.
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