Milky Way's Black Hole May Be Neutrino Factory

Less than three hours after astronomers detected the biggest burst of X-rays streaming from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, a rarely seen, high-energy neutrino showed up in an underground detector in the South Pole.

A coincidence?

Scientists think not. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory made several more detections of the ghost-like particles a few days after the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, flared, a newly released study shows.

The source of these tiny particles, which have virtually no mass and carry no electrical charge, has long been the subject of much debate. The particles permeate space, but are difficult to detect since they cannot be absorbed by matter or deflected by magnetic fields.

Since opening in 2010, IceCube has logged just 36 high-energy neutrinos.

While the study, published in Physical Review D, is not conclusive, it provides the first evidence that the Milky Way’s black hole, a region so dense with matter that not even photons of light can escape its gravitational fist, may be producing high-energy neutrinos. Sgr A*, as the black hole is known, is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers believe most galaxies harbor supermassive black holes in their cores.

“Figuring out where high-energy neutrinos come from is one of the biggest problems in astrophysics today,” study co-author Yang Bai, with the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said in a press release.

“We now have the first evidence that an astronomical source — the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole — may be producing these very energetic neutrinos,” Bai said.

Astronomers made the first correlation with observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Additional flares were observed by two more X-ray telescopes, Swift and NuSTAR.

Read more at Discovery News