June 10, 2016

In the background an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. In red the gas seen by ALMA (Image B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/G. Tremblay et al./NASA/ESA Hubble/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO))

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the observation of an intergalactic deluge of gases that from large clouds are falling toward the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Abell 2597 cluster. By using the ALMA radio telescope a team of astronomers led by Grant Tremblay of Yale University discovered the first evidence that these huge black holes can gorge on gas through chaotic and clumpy rains of giant clouds of very cold molecular gas.