1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,183 Our Milky Way’s central black hole has a leak! 2 00:00:04,183 --> 00:00:09,383 This supermassive black hole, over 4 million times more massive than our Sun, 3 00:00:09,383 --> 00:00:12,200 looks like it still has the remnants of a blowtorch-like 4 00:00:12,200 --> 00:00:15,208 jet dating back several thousand years. 5 00:00:15,208 --> 00:00:19,479 NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope hasn’t photographed the phantom jet yet, 6 00:00:19,479 --> 00:00:22,970 but it has helped find circumstantial evidence that the jet is still 7 00:00:22,970 --> 00:00:26,750 pushing feebly into a huge hydrogen cloud. 8 00:00:26,750 --> 00:00:31,410 This is further evidence that the black hole is not a sleeping monster, but periodically 9 00:00:31,410 --> 00:00:37,870 hiccups as stars and gas clouds fall into it. The hiccup results in superheated material 10 00:00:37,870 --> 00:00:43,589 blasting away from the black hole as narrow beams, or jets, shooting in the same direction 11 00:00:43,589 --> 00:00:49,500 as the black hole’s spin axis along with a flood of ionizing radiation. 12 00:00:49,500 --> 00:00:55,199 As the jet blows through the gas, it hits material, which creates a series of expanding 13 00:00:55,199 --> 00:00:59,646 bubbles that extend out to at least 500 light-years. 14 00:00:59,646 --> 00:01:01,879 The streams continue to percolate out of the 15 00:01:01,879 --> 00:01:06,869 Milky Way’s dense gas disk into the galactic halo. 16 00:01:06,869 --> 00:01:11,960 Scientists concluded that this black hole clearly surged in brightness by as much as 17 00:01:11,960 --> 00:01:17,630 1 millionfold in the last million years. That would be enough for a jet to punch into the 18 00:01:17,630 --> 00:01:20,833 halo of material that surrounds the galaxy. 19 00:01:20,833 --> 00:01:25,049 This Hubble image of Galaxy NGC 1068, shows 20 00:01:25,049 --> 00:01:28,920 a similar scenario occurring. 21 00:01:28,920 --> 00:01:34,000 Previous observations by Hubble and other telescopes found evidence that the Milky Way’s 22 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:39,369 black hole had an outburst about 2-4 million years ago that was energetic enough to create 23 00:01:39,369 --> 00:01:44,509 an immense pair of bubbles towering above our galaxy that glow in gamma-rays. 24 00:01:44,509 --> 00:01:49,710 Hubble was used to see how fast the bubbles were expanding and what they were made of. 25 00:01:49,710 --> 00:01:54,950 Hubble later found that the burst was so powerful that it lit up a gaseous structure as far 26 00:01:54,950 --> 00:01:59,449 away as 200,000 light-years from the galactic center. 27 00:01:59,449 --> 00:02:02,549 Called the Magellanic stream, seen here in pink, 28 00:02:02,549 --> 00:02:06,600 this gas is still glowing from that event even today. 29 00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:11,140 The residual jet feature is close enough to the black hole that it would become much more 30 00:02:11,140 --> 00:02:16,411 prominent only a few decades after the Milky Way’s black hole powers up again. 31 00:02:16,411 --> 00:02:22,114 Whenever that does actually end up happening, it’s sure to be quite a spectacular show! 32 00:02:22,114 --> 00:02:28,982 [ MUSIC ]