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A 鈥渟pace slinky鈥� has been imaged in action for the first time: a series of pictures shot by the Hubble Space Telescope over 13 years has been pieced together to reveal the spiral motion of a jet of superheated gas shooting from the central black hole of the nearby M87 galaxy (see video, above).

When a supermassive black hole at the centre of a large galaxy is actively feeding, it can fire jets of plasma into space at high speed. Previous images of such jets, captured in another part of the universe, also provided evidence for a corkscrew shape. This was probably created as the plasma travelled along coiled magnetic field lines emanating from the swirling disc of material falling into the black hole. But those images had a hard time determining if the material was spiralling up the length of the field lines or simply moving from side to side.

Using images from Hubble, from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland and colleagues analysed a jet spurting out of M87鈥檚 central black hole. Their detailed view of the jet in motion shows that it is made up of clumps of gas that brighten and fade over time. The blobs have complex dynamics, with gas speeding up at different rates along the jet and even stationary spots in some of the far-out clumps.

The work should give insight into how galaxies evolve, since high-speed jets produced during a black hole鈥檚 active phase are thought to play a significant role. 鈥淏y studying the details of this process, we hope to learn more about galaxy formation and black hole physics in general,鈥� says Meyer. The team鈥檚 next step will be to study three more jets using Hubble observations, to see if they behave in similar ways.

Journal reference: The Astrophysical Journal Letters,