TORONTO, New research led by astrophysicists at York University has revealed the fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths near a supermassive black hole.

“We’re talking wind speeds of 20 per cent the speed of light, which is more than 200 million kilometres an hour. That’s equivalent to a category 77 hurricane,” says Jesse Rogerson, who led the research as part of his PhD thesis in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York U. “And we have reason to believe that there are quasar winds that are even faster.”

Astronomers have known about the existence of quasar winds since the late 1960s. At least one in four quasars have them. Quasars are the discs of hot gas that form around supermassive black holes at the centre of massive galaxies – they are bigger than Earth’s orbit around the sun and hotter than the surface of the sun, generating enough light to be seen across the observable universe.

“Black holes can have a mass that is billions of times larger than the sun, mostly because they are messy eaters in a way, capturing any material that ventures too close,” says York University Associate Professor Patrick Hall, who is Rogerson’s supervisor. “But as matter spirals toward a black hole, some of it is blown away by the heat and light of the quasar. These are the winds that we are detecting.”