'Space Tornadoes' Discovered Swirling Around Milky Way's Central Black Hole

Astronomers have revealed that "space tornadoes" are swirling around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*.

The unexpected discovery came via observations of the star-forming ring of turbulent dust and gases—dubbed the central molecular zone—that encircles Sagittarius A*.

The find was made possible by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, which has sharpened our view of this mysterious region of space by 100 percent.

"When we checked the ALMA images showing the outflows, we noticed these long and narrow filaments spatially offset from any star-forming regions," said paper author and astronomer Kai Yang of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in a statement.

"Unlike any objects we know, these filaments really surprised us. Since then, we have been pondering what they are."

In their study, Yang and colleagues used ALMA's high resolution and sensitivity to map out distinct spectral lines—corresponding to specific compounds—within the clouds of the central molecular zone.

The filaments were detected in the emission lines of both silicon monoxide (SiO)—which is particularly useful for detecting the presence of shock waves in the cloud—and eight other molecules.

According to the team, the signals are inconsistent with those previously seen with other types of dense gas filaments, and show no association with dust emission.

"Our research contributes to the fascinating galactic center landscape by uncovering these slim filaments as an important part of material circulation," said paper co-author and astrophysicist professor Xing Lu of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in a statement.

"We can envision these as space tornadoes: they are violent streams of gas, they dissipate shortly, and they distribute materials into the environment efficiently."

It is unclear at present exactly how the slim filaments are formed—but the researchers believe that shock processes within the central molecular zone likely play a role.

With their initial study complete, the team are hopeful that ALMA's future observations—which will cover multiple SiO transitions and span the central molecular zone—may be able to reveal the origins of the space tornadoes.

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Reference

Yang, K., Lu, X., Zhang, Y., Liu, X., Ginsburg, A., Liu, H. B., Cheng, Y., Feng, S., Liu, T., Zhang, Q., Mills, E. A. C., Walker, D. L., Inutsuka, S., Battersby, C., Longmore, S. N., Tang, X., Kauffmann, J., Gu, Q., Li, S., ... Shen, Z. (2025). ALMA observations of massive clouds in the central molecular zone: Slim filaments tracing parsec-scale shocks. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 694. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202453191