It takes jet power to clean a galaxy! - In a paper we publishe today in Science, the first clear evidence is
presented that radio jets from the supermassive black hole in the centre
of a galaxy clears gas away from the galaxy.
Astronomers have been puzzled for quite a while by the fact that many galaxies in the Universe seem to be depleted of their gas and, as a consequence, are not able any more to form any new stars. One of the main results obtained with the WSRT in recent years is the discovery of the existence of very fast outflows of cold gas in a number of galaxies that have an active galactic nucleus, and it was suspected that these outflows play an important role in making galaxies gas poor. However, the mechanism driving these outflows was not understood because with the WSRT one can establish that outflows occur, but the resolution of the WSRT is not good enough to determine where in the galaxy the outflow occurs. ...