Mysterious cosmic threads are reaching out from the Milky Way's monster black hole

MeerKAT image of the galactic center with color-coded position angles of all filaments. (Image credit: Farhad Yusef-Zadeh/Northwestern University)

The Milky Way is full of cosmic threads reaching out from the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center.

Hundreds of filaments of gas, each 5–10 light-years in length, line the galactic center and radiate outward along the plane of the galaxy like spokes on a bicycle wheel with our galaxy's black hole at the hub, new radio observations made by South Africa's MeerKAT telescope reveal.