| Description |
The center of the Milky Way harbors a now dormant massive black hole (Sgr A*). Over the years evidence has mounted that Sgr A* released an energetic X-ray flare nearly 100 years ago. The strongest evidence for this is the detection of reflected X-ray emission towards molecular clouds in the central regions of the galaxy. We believe that we have directed direct evidence of the effects of this flare due to the presence of warm (excitation termperature virgul 600-800 K) H3O+ in the envelope of the Sgr B2 molecular cloud. These observations were obtained as part of the HEXOS key program and in all we have detected H3O+ J,K = 1,1 through 11,11 each in absorption. These are the inversion transitions that lie at the bottom of a given K ladder. For J,K > 3 the transitions cannot be be excited by conventional collisional excitation or by radiative pumping. Instead our model strongly favors that the rotationally warm H3O+ is the result of formation pumping due to the strong impinging X-ray flux, potentially from Sgr A*. We propose to follow up this fantastic result with a small search for rotationally warm H3O+ absorption towards other galactic center molecular clouds that are strong continuum sources and are in close proximity to Sgr A*. This proposal follows a very interesting molecular astrophysical puzzle that may be a direct link to activity from the central engine of our galaxy. |
