March 5, 2017

Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole with ultrafast winds (Image ESA)

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the most detailed observations of incredibly fast winds that travel at speeds of up to 71,000 km/s, nearly a quarter of the speed of light, near a supermassive black hole. A team of researchers used NASA’s NuSTAR and ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescopes to observe this phenomenon at the center of the galaxy IRAS 13224-3809 recording very quick temperature changes.