Based on publicly available data from the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, two Mexican scientists discovered activity near the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. The Sagittarius A* black hole at the center of the Milky Way is considered to be quiet. It does not absorb the mass of matter around it and therefore there is not much emission from its region. But some of it is flying, and scientists have found a possible source of the mysterious flares.

A few years ago, scientists discovered periodic flares in the X-ray range coming to us from the Sagittarius A* black hole. Astrophysicists Gustavo Magallanes-Guijón and Sergio Mendoza from the National Autonomous University of Mexico decided to examine this question in more detail and turned to data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope. Scientists analyzed 180 days of telescope records between June 22 and December 19, 2022. They reported the results of the analysis in a paper on the preprint website arXiv.

Analysis consisted specifically in processing and finding patterns that emerged periodically. As a result, they discovered one of them. It turns out that a gamma signal with 3 sigma confidence (for a “hard” confirmation of the discovery, at least 5σ confidence) arrives from the vicinity of Sagittarius A* every 76.32 minutes. Most likely, a stream of gas is orbiting the black hole at the center of the Milky Way at about 30% the speed of light, at the approximate distance of Mercury from the Sun.

Scientists believe that the gas cloud will also spread in other ranges, and this is related to the periodic flares previously detected in the X-ray range. No radiation escapes from the black hole itself, but in the area of ​​absorption of matter in the accretion disk, processes are very active and are accompanied by energy emissions. Maybe in the future Sagittarius A* will continue to burn, but for now it’s just a wink.