Over in a small galaxy some 26 million light years away, astronomers spotted a black hole "burping" gas in two noticeable instances.
According to BBC News, the researchers observed two large waves of gas coming from a black hole in a galaxy named NGC 5194. They presented their findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal, at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
"For an analogy, astronomers often refer to black holes as 'eating' stars and gas. Apparently, black holes can also burp after their meal," Eric Schlegel, a researcher at The University of Texas in San Antonio who led the study, said in a news release. "Our observation is important because this behavior would likely happen very often in the early universe, altering the evolution of galaxies. It is common for big black holes to expel gas outward, but rare to have such a close, resolved view of these events."
The researchers called NGC 5194 and younger sibling to NGC 5195, a galaxy also referred to as "the Whirlpool Galaxy," which belongs to the Messier 51 system. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the researchers noticed two arcs of X-ray emissions pushing hydrogen gas from the galaxy center outward.
"We think these arcs represent fossils from two enormous blasts when the black hole expelled material outward into the galaxy," study co-author Christine Jones, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in the release. "This activity is likely to have had a big effect on the galactic landscape."
