Daily Image
23-10-2014
Today's Colloquium: The light and the dark: Can the super-massive black hole at the Galactic centre dominate the Galaxy?
| Submitter: | David Jones (Radboud University Nijmegen) |
| Description: | Our understanding of the very centre of our Galaxy is undergoing a revolution. Previously, it was thought that the super-massive black hole thought to reside at the dynamical centre of our Galaxy was quiescent and that, although the region was confusing and busy, there were not many signs that this region could dominate the Galactic ecology as a whole. However, the recent discovery of voluminous plumes of gamma-ray and radio emission seemingly emanating from the central regions of the Galaxy have begun to question this view. Much work has been done showing that these objects are perhaps due to the central black hole, either as an outburst or a sustained period of outflow similar to other 'radio-loud' galaxies in the Universe. The contra-point to this is that these Galactic-scale emissions come from the regular star-forming dust and gas residing in the Galactic centre, emanating as a wind and working to 'inflate' these large bubble-like objects. In this talk, I will describe recent observational and theoretical work being done by myself and colleagues that is beginning to test these two models that gives key insights into the past of the centre of our Galaxy and answer the question of whether the Galactic centre black hole can dominate large parts of the Galaxy. The answer to this question has important ramifications about not only our own Galaxy and its past and future, but also galaxy evolution as a whole. |
| Copyright: | Hubble: NASA, ESA, and Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); Spitzer: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech) |
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