What is the mechanism that produces high-energy flares near the Sagittarius A* black hole?

Scientists Use AI to Reconstruct Energetic Flare Blasted from Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Using observations of the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the Milky Way and AI, scientists have reconstructed a 3D video of Sagittarius A* and its environment. The video captures a high-energy flare as it orbits the black hole, providing new insights into how these energetic events form and evolve.

The Mysterious Flares of Sagittarius A*

Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is surrounded by a disk of gas and dust that is constantly falling into the black hole. This accretion disk is the source of powerful flares of energy that are seen in X-ray, infrared, and radio wavelengths.

The exact mechanism that produces these flares is not fully understood. However, one proposed mechanism is the formation of compact, bright regions within the accretion disk close to the black hole’s event horizon.

Reconstructing the Flare with AI

To better understand the formation of these flares, astronomers used AI to reconstruct a 3D video of a flare that was observed orbiting Sgr A* on April 11, 2017. The video was created using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile.

The AI algorithm used to create the video was trained on a dataset of simulated black hole flares. This allowed the algorithm to learn the characteristic features of these flares and to reconstruct them from the ALMA data.

The Structure of the Flare

The reconstructed video shows that the flare was a compact, bright region located about six times the event horizon of the black hole. The flare was also rotating in a clockwise direction in a low-inclination orbital plane.

These findings are consistent with prior studies of Sgr A* using other telescopes, such as the GRAVITY instrument on the Very Large Telescope and the Event Horizon Telescope.

Implications for Black Hole Accretion

The successful reconstruction of the flare using AI provides new insights into the formation and evolution of these energetic events. The findings suggest that the flares are formed by the interaction of the accretion disk with the strong gravitational field of the black hole.

The work also demonstrates the potential of AI for studying black holes and other astrophysical objects. By using AI to analyze data from telescopes, astronomers can gain new insights into the behavior of these objects and the physical processes that occur in their vicinity.