AI Decodes Black Hole Spin: Throughput Computing Reveals Milky Way’s Rapidly Rotating Core

An international team of astronomers has utilised high-throughput computing and artificial intelligence to analyse data from the Event Horizon Telescope, revealing new insights into Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Leveraging millions of synthetic data files generated by the Center for High Throughput Computing at the Morgridge Institute and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers trained a Bayesian neural network to examine data from 2017 observations. This analysis suggests the black hole is rotating at close to its theoretical maximum speed, with its rotational axis aligned towards Earth, and that emission originates primarily from hot electrons within the accretion disk rather than a jet emission. The findings, published in three papers in Astronomy & Astrophysics on 6 June 2025, also suggest the magnetic fields within the accretion disk behave differently than current theoretical models predict.

Throughput Computing Powers Black Hole Research

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration enhanced analyses of data concerning Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, by utilising high-throughput computing. Researchers trained a Bayesian neural network with millions of synthetic data files, significantly exceeding the handful used in prior studies. This approach allows scientists to test theoretical models against observational data with greater precision.

The team, comprising researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Amsterdam, and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, focused on improving simulations of black hole behaviour. They generated these synthetic datasets to better understand the complex interplay between Sagittarius A*’s rotation and the structure of its accretion disk – the swirling matter falling into the black hole.

By scaling computational capacity, the collaboration achieved a more detailed characterisation. This enabled a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the black hole’s spin and the structure of the material surrounding it.