A black hole in the Milky Way has apparently changed the color of nearby stars

According to the theory, the black hole launched a powerful jet of gas which tore the outer layers of the red giants of the galaxy, which saw the red part of the star removed as the star grew hotter and hotter. and more blue. This is the conviction of the astrophysicist of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Michal Zajaček, who published this theory on November 12 in the Astrophysics Journal.

There are no strong jets of gas coming from Sagittarius these days, but above and below the center of the Milky Way are two large gas bubbles emitting gamma rays, which is possible proof of the powerful jet that caused the red giants near it to lose their outer layer 4 million years ago.

“The jet preferably acts on the big red giants,” Zajaček said. “They can be effectively eliminated by the jet.”

Zajaček says red giant stars are more vulnerable to jets like this than others because of their size. These types of stars form when the center of smaller stars is so filled with helium that it can no longer burn its hydrogen and instead burns the hydrogen in a layer surrounding the center. This causes the star’s outer layer to expand, which in turn cools the surface and turns red. The resulting size makes red giants a prime target for throws like Sagittarius A *.

As these red giants orbit Sagittarius A *, they must cross the jet that Zajaček describes hundreds or thousands of times before the outer layer is torn off and the red turns blue. His team calculates that the jet is the most effective at ripping the outer layer of red giants 0.13 light-years from the black hole.

University of California Los Angeles astronomer Tuan Do, however, says he believes it “may take a combination of several of these types of mechanisms to fully explain the lack of red giants,” according to Science News. He says it was probably something other than a jet that caused the lack of red giants further from the black hole.

Do and Zajaček both theorize that this could be the work of a large disc of gas that circled the black hole millions of years ago. As the red giants orbited the black hole, they likely found themselves passing through said disc and gas from the disc may have torn their outer layers in the process.

To learn more about the science of black holes, read the recent discovery of the closest black hole to Earth then read about it black hole nine times bigger than the sun which shoots in space and time. Check it out black hole that seems to break the laws of physics after that.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance writer and guide for the IGN. You can follow it on Twitter @LeBlancWes.