Conceptual illustration showing a “blast” driven by a supermassive black hole hidden at the center of a galaxy, with its energy propagating beyond the galaxy and into the surrounding galaxy group environment. The illustration depicts the transport of an enormous amount of energy – equivalent to several billion supernova explosions – into the surrounding space, driving the violent motion of hot gas extending out to distances of approximately 300,000 light-years. Credit: Tohoku University

Astronomers once thought winds generated by supermassive black holes affected only their host galaxies, but a recent study found that their energy can also reach surrounding galaxies.

Winds from a supermassive black hole can carry energy far beyond the galaxy that contains it. New observations show that this influence can extend roughly 300,000 light-years and involve about 100 times more energy than previous estimates, challenging the idea that such winds are largely confined to their host galaxies.

“Black holes are largely known for sucking matter in, but they also eject gas in the form of powerful winds,” says Satoshi Yamada, assistant professor at Tohoku University’s Frontier Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences (FRIS). “These winds were thought to be contained within the galaxy, but our study revealed that the force is immensely more powerful than previously understood.”

X-ray image of the H1821+643 galaxy group obtained with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The green dashed square indicates the observed region, corresponding to a physical scale of approximately 900,000 light-years on each side. The lower panel shows the energy distribution of X-ray emission lines from iron ions (e.g., at 6.7 keV) in the central region (within a radius of about 300,000 light-years), with observational data (white) overlaid with the best-fit model (red). Compared with a typical galaxy cluster such as the Perseus cluster, the line broadening is significantly more pronounced, indicating highly turbulent and dynamically active hot gas over a wide spatial extent. Credit: Yamada et al.

XRISM traced the winds beyond one galaxy

Yamada and colleagues from Kanazawa University, Tokyo Metropolitan University, and other institutions investigated the quasar H1821+643 using the X-ray astronomy satellite XRISM. Located in the constellation Draco about 3.4 billion light-years from Earth, the quasar is an extremely luminous object powered by a supermassive black hole actively consuming gas.

The rapidly growing black hole lies at the center of a galaxy cluster and stirs the surrounding hot, X-ray-emitting gas. To measure how that gas was moving, the researchers analyzed emission lines produced by iron ions.

Turbulence carried far more energy

XRISM’s high-precision measurements showed that the high-temperature gas around the black hole is far from stationary. Instead, turbulence spreads the gas violently across a vast region, with the flow reaching beyond the host galaxy to distances of about 300,000 light-years.

Schematic illustration of the hierarchical structure of the Universe, from a galaxy group (a collection of galaxies) to an individual galaxy and the supermassive black hole at its center. Although a black hole is more than 100 million times smaller than the radius of its host galaxy, it plays a crucial role in the galaxy’s central region. Credit: Tohoku University

The energy carried by this turbulence was approximately 100 times larger than earlier estimates. It was equivalent to the energy from several billion supernova explosions – the explosions that occur when stars reach the end of their lives.

“For the first time, we have shown that black holes influence the broader cosmic environment through a shock wave of astonishing power,” adds Yamada. “Black holes are key drivers of gas flows and motion in space, transporting vast amounts of energy to different regions of the cosmos.”

Future observations are expected to provide a clearer picture of how black holes affect their wider surroundings and how matter and elements circulate throughout the cosmos.

Reference: “Vigorous turbulence driven by quasar-mode feedback in a cluster core” by Satoshi Yamada, Shutaro Ueda, Hirofumi Noda, Yutaka Fujita, Misaki Mizumoto, Kentaro Nagamine, Claudio Ricci, Shoji Ogawa, Taiki Kawamuro, Shinya Yamada, Yuichi Terashima and Yoshihiro Ueda, 28 July 2026, Nature Astronomy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-026-02939-x

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