Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to image the structure of dust and gas around a distant supermassive black hole in the galaxy ESO 428-G14, about 70 million light-years from Earth. They found that the energy heating this cloud of gas and dust does not come from the black hole itself, as previously thought, but from collisions with jets of gas moving at nearly the speed of light, creating a shock wave.
ESO 428-G14 is an active galaxy with an active galactic nucleus that emits intense light due to the presence of a supermassive black hole that absorbs matter. This unexpected discovery was made by the Galactic Activity, Torus, and Outflow Survey (GATOS) team, which uses JWST to study nearby galaxies.
Supermassive black holes, such as the one at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, or M87* in the galaxy Messier 87, have masses that are millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. They are surrounded by gas and dust that form an accretion disk that gradually feeds them. Due to enormous gravitational forces, these disks are heated to millions of degrees and shine brightly.
However, not all of the matter falls directly onto the black hole. Strong magnetic fields direct some of the matter toward the black hole’s poles, forming jets that are ejected outward at nearly the speed of light. These jets also emit light in various regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly radio waves.
The dust around such black holes often absorbs visible light, but the infrared radiation that JWST can detect allows us to see through it. The GATOS team observing ESO 428-G14 discovered dust spreading along the jet, suggesting that these powerful leaks are not only heating this dust, but also forming it.
Further research could reveal how supermassive black holes influence the formation of their galaxies and interact with the surrounding matter.
According to Space