Saturday, June 9, 2012

Ghostly Jets Haunt the Milky Way’s Black Hole

Ghostly Jets Haunt the Milky Way’s Black Hole:

This artist's conception shows an edge-on view of the Milky Way galaxy and newly discovered gamma-ray jets extending from the central black hole. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)
A ghost is haunting the Milky Way’s central black hole, revealing the galactic nucleus was likely much more active in the past than it is now. Scientists using the Fermi space telescope have found faint apparitions of what must have been powerful gamma-ray jets emanating from our galaxy’s center.
“These faint jets are a ghost or after-image of what existed a million years ago,” said Meng Su, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), and lead author of a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal. “They strengthen the case for an active galactic nucleus in the Milky Way’s relatively recent past.”


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