Milky Way’s supermassive black hole ready for kick

A new study has found that the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is warping the surrounding spacetime so that it can look more like a football. The black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*), contains about 4 million times the mass of our Sun.

The findings were made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Using a new method called the "outflow method" that uses X-ray and radio data, the team found that Sgr A* is spinning with an angular velocity that is about 60% of the maximum possible value, and with an angular momentum of about 90% of the maximum possible value.

In this picture, the gas swirling around the supermassive black hole is depicted by the yellow-orange material on either side. This material inevitably plunges towards the black hole and crosses the event horizon once it falls inside the football shape. Consequently, the region within the football shape yet outside the event horizon is illustrated as a cavity.

Additionally, the blue blobs illustrate jets being ejected from the spinning black hole's poles. When viewed from the top, along the barrel of these jets, the warped spacetime created by Sgr A* appears as a circular shape.

A new study of Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy — found that the black hole is spinning so quickly that it's warping the surrounding spacetime into the shape of an American football.🏈 More: https://t.co/T0iEMSmTyi pic.twitter.com/HwXppefWd0

— Chandra Observatory (@chandraxray) February 8, 2024