Gigantic black holes lurk at the center of virtually every galaxy, including ours, but we’ve lacked a precise picture of what impact they have on their surroundings. However, a University of Chicago-led group of scientists has used data from a recently launched satellite to reveal our clearest look yet into the boiling, seething gas surrounding two supermassive black holes, each located in the center of massive galaxy clusters.

“For the first time, we can directly measure the kinetic energy of the gas stirred by the black hole,” said Annie Heinrich, UChicago graduate student and among the lead authors on one of two papers on the findings, released in Nature. “It’s as though each supermassive black hole sits in the ‘eye of its own storm.’”

The readings came from the satellite XRISM, which was launched in 2023 by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency in partnership with NASA and the European Space Agency. It has a unique ability to track the motions and read the chemical makeup of extremely hot, X-ray emitting gas in galaxy clusters.