NASA’s Hubble Space telescope has observed that the Supermassive Black hole inside the Milky way galaxy had its last dinner at six million years ago. At that time, the black hole swallowed a large amount of infalling gas. That black hole vomited a massive bubble of gas after the dinner which is two million times heavier than the Sun.
Since then, the outflow of the gas still billows both above and below the galaxy’s center through the bubbles at 2 million miles per hour. Those bubbles are known as the ‘Fermi Bubbles’. Back in the year 2010, NASA first spotted the Fermi Bubbles with their Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. According to Mail Online, Hubble’s new observations helped scientists to draw a better picture of their creation and composition.
Researchers published their findings in the journal of The Astrophysical Journal. Lead researcher and the author of the journal, Rongmon Bordoloi from Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) said in a statement,“For the first time, we have traced the motion of cool gas throughout one of the bubbles, which allowed us to map the velocity of the gas and calculate when the bubbles formed”. Researchers found that the energetic event happened 6 million to 9 million years ago.
In the previous studies, researchers determined that those bubbles are around two million years old. When it gets heated in extreme temperature then it releases itself through the Black hole’s spin axis. Researchers observed the northern bubble by using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS).
As per the report by Science Daily, the diameter of the northern bubble is about 23,000 light years long. For the first time, scientists measured the speed, composition, and temperature of the bubble. The average temperature inside the bubble is about 17,700° Fahrenheit but, those parts that contain super hot gasses has temperature about 18° Fahrenheit.
Researchers also found cooler gasses that could be interstellar gas and it was traveling 2 million miles per hour. Hubble also identified the evidence of Silicon(S) and Carbon(C) that represents the fossil remnants of stellar evolution. Borbodol explained that they have already tried to trace the outflow of other galaxies but never succeed to calculate the motion of the gas but, in this case as they are inside the Milky way, it’s become easier.
