At the heart of our Galaxy lies a supermassive black hole and while it’s relatively quiet for something of its size and insatiability- Astronomers have captured some extreme gamma rays coming from the area around it, some of the most powerful ever.
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00:00At the heart of our galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, and while it's relatively quiet
00:08for something of its size and insatiability, astronomers have captured some extreme gamma
00:12rays coming from the area around it, some of the most powerful ever.
00:17Over the past seven years, researchers at the high-altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory
00:21in Mexico have detected some 98 gamma ray events.
00:24Some of those had energy levels which exceeded 100 tera electron volts.
00:29They say this confirms a pavetron source of ultra-high energy gamma rays at a location
00:33in the Milky Way known as the Galactic Center Ridge, which they add means that our galactic
00:38center is home to some of the most extreme physical processes in the universe.
00:43Pavetrons are wild, as they are the summation of charged protons and atomic nuclei whipping
00:47through the cosmos at around the speed of light, interacting with particle accelerators,
00:51which could be something like the magnetic field around a supermassive black hole.
00:55Experts say this is a surprising find in our galaxy, but they have identified the source
00:59which they have now named HAWC J1746-2856.
01:04However they add, they have no idea what it is.