Windy black hole is a cosmic rebel

A BLACK hole in a nearby galaxy is blowing a mighty wind, breaking a long-accepted rule about the rate at which black holes can feed. The discovery suggests that even small black holes may play a larger role in galaxy evolution than previously realised. When black holes consume nearby matter, the gas and dust reach scorching temperatures just before falling in. The hot gas emits powerful, bright “winds” of radiation, and theory has it that the energy in these winds cannot exceed a certain limit, which is tied to the black hole’s mass. Winds beyond that limit would blow incoming gas away, halting the black hole’s growth. But Roberto Soria of Curtin University in Western Australia, and colleagues measured the mass of a furiously feeding black hole in a nearby galaxy and found that it blows stronger winds than its mass should allow (Science, doi.org/rqz). If other bright black holes are also breaking their wind limits, it would mean that such objects have been injecting much more energy into galaxies than we thought possible, potentially influencing galactic growth since the early days of the universe.