Miguel y Maria science space 1ºESO

Astronomers Discover Black Hole's Dieting Strategy

New X-ray observations suggest how the Milky Way's supermassive black hole stays so trim when faced with a feast.

Our galaxy’s black hole has an eating disorder. This is not a surprise. Young, massive stars surrounding the black hole throw off thick winds of particles, and these particles should feed the black hole at a rate of about an Earth’s worth of mass each year. But that influx would make X-ray emission from the beast’s tutu-like accretion disk 100 million times brighter than it actually is.

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This composite image shows the emission around the Milky Way's supermassive black hole in X-rays (blue) and infrared (purple and yellow). The inset is an X-ray close-up of the black hole's immediate neighborhood (half a light-year wide).

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Astronomers have come up with a few ideas to explain the mystery but haven’t been able to settle on one solution. “It is as though you filled up your car’s gas tank, drove two feet, and ran out of gas,” Jeremy Schnittman (NASA Goddard) writes in a perspective piece in this week’s Science. “Is there a massive leak in the fuel line, or is the mileage really that horrible?” It’s hard to know without hoisting the car and taking a look underneath.