Podcast: Rising Winds from Supermassive Black Holes
Astronomers now believe there’s a supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of every galaxy. When these monsters are actively feeding, an accretion disk of material builds up around them, like swirling water waiting to go down the drain. For the first time, astronomers have detected winds rising up from this disk of doomed material. And it turns out, these winds have a profound impact on the surrounding galaxy.
Dr. Andrew Robinson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Andrew was part of a team that detected these winds, announced this week in the journal Nature.
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