A Spinning Top at the Galaxy’s Core Snuffs Out Stars express
Scientists studied the galaxy VV 340a, where a jet from a black hole, wobbling, blows away gas — like a fan that blows away flour, preventing you from making pastries. The jet wobbles with a period of 820 thousand years and carries away 19 solar masses of gas per year. This slows down star birth: does the 'fan' at the galaxy's center control its life?
At the center of the galaxy VV 340a lurks a supermassive black hole. It spews a jet of matter that doesn’t fly straight but wobbles, like the axis of a slowing spinning top. One full wobble takes about 820,000 years. The reason: the material falling onto the black hole is unevenly twisted, so it rotates in jerks.
This swaying whirlwind pushes superheated gas out of the galaxy—each year, roughly 19 solar masses escape. The hydrogen in it is so hot that it glows, and that glow lets spectral analysis measure the gas speed. It turns out the gas travels thousands of light-years away.
The gas swept out by the jet is the raw material for stars. Without it, star formation sputters out. So a relatively modest black hole governs the life of a huge stellar system.
🎯 In one full wobble cycle, the jet ejects about 16 million solar masses—more than the mass of many globular star clusters.