Seen a violent cosmic storm produced by a black hole

A violent cosmic storm , produced by a supermassive black hole , has been revealed by the new Resolve spectrometer on board the Xrism satellite, a collaboration between the space agencies of Japan, Europe and the United States. Thanks to the data collected at very high resolution in X-rays, it was possible to identify for the first time five distinct flows of plasma that make up the wind and that escape from the accretion disk of the black hole at extreme speeds , equal to 20-30% of the speed of light .

The study, in which the University of Rome Tor Vergata and the National Institute for Astrophysics also participate, is published in Nature. “Our group has played a key role in the interpretation of these data, thanks to advanced X-ray spectroscopic techniques and innovative theoretical models for the physics of winds produced by black holes,” observes Francesco Tombesi, associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and associate of INAF. “These results open a new window on the study of the extreme universe , and lay the foundations for better understanding how black holes influence the evolution of galaxies .”

The cosmic storm detected in the heart of the quasar Pds 456 is millions of times faster than the most powerful hurricanes on Earth . Such enormous energy and such a complex structure revolutionize our understanding of the extreme environment around supermassive black holes and call into question the current models of feedback between black holes and galaxies. "The theories accepted so far - Tombesi underlines - are unable to explain such a combination of force and fragmentation : it is clear that new models will be needed to describe these cosmic monsters". "Pds 456 is a precious laboratory for studying the very powerful winds produced by supermassive black holes in the local universe", adds Valentina Braito, researcher at INAF in Milan. "This new observation has allowed us to measure the geometry and distribution of the wind speed with a level of detail that was unthinkable before the advent of Xrism".