Black hole detected with explosive winds at 130 million mph:

A black hole inside a distant spiral galaxy It is devouring material from the surrounding universe and creating winds at speeds never before seen by astronomers.

The European Space Agency said the black hole inside NGC 3783 has a mass of 30 million suns. The black hole consumes nearby material to feed an active galactic nucleus at the center of the galaxy, ESA said in a press release. The core is “an extremely bright and active region” that sends out powerful jets and winds, the agency said.

A powerful wind was measured at 60,000 kilometers per second, or 130 million winds per hour, about 20% of the speed of light.

“We have never seen a black hole create winds with such speed before,” Liyi Gu of the Netherlands Space Research Organization (SRON) said in a statement. Gu led the international investigation team. “For the first time, we have seen how a rapid burst of X-ray light from a black hole immediately triggers ultrafast winds, which form in a single day.”

Researcher Matteo Guainazzi said the winds around the black hole were created when the core’s tangled magnetic field suddenly uncoiled, creating something similar to the coronal mass ejections that spring from the sun “but on a scale almost too large to imagine.”

The similarity between black holes and the Sun makes “these mysterious objects seem a little less strange,” the ESA said. Project scientist Erik Kuulkers said the discovery “suggests that solar and high-energy physics may work in surprisingly familiar ways throughout the universe.”

Winds from active galactic nuclei play a role in the development of the galaxies in which they are found, said ESA researcher Camille Diez. Learning more about nuclei and how they behave will lead to a better understanding of space, Diez said.

“Because they are so influential, knowing more about the magnetism of AGN and how they cause winds like these is key to understanding the history of galaxies throughout the Universe,” Diez said.