NASA's Chandra X-ray Space Telescope has recorded the strongest winds ever recorded in space around a binary system containing a massive stellar black hole called IGR J17091 that has a mass around ten times our mass. Sun. The space "tornado" moves at 20 million kilometers per hour , that is, at 3% of the speed of light. Unlike hurricane winds on Earth, the IGR J17091 wind is blowing in many different directions. The velocity has been calculated using a spectrum of iron ions recently carried out by the Chandra telescope.
"This is like the cosmic equivalent of the winds of a category five hurricane," said Ashley King of the University of Michigan (USA), lead author of the study published in the latest issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters . "We did not expect to see such strong winds in a black hole like this," he points out.
Astronomers believe that the magnetic fields in the disks of black holes are responsible for producing the winds and jets. The geometry of the magnetic fields and the speed at which the material falls towards the black hole must influence whether the jets or winds are produced.
