The brightness of M87* appears to be flickering over time, likely due to it expelling and consuming nearby matter that gets caught in its intense gravitational pull, scientists said in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal. They found the presence of a consistent shadow in the shape of a crescent - and noticed that it has rotated significantly over the last decade. Since releasing the historic photo, scientists have studied archival data sets from 2019-2013 to better understand how the black hole behaves. Now, more images reveal that the black hole appears to be "wobbling" - a big surprise to researchers. This work was published today (March 24) in two papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by the EHT collaboration, which involved over 300 researchers from organizations around the world. You can find the papers here and here.Įmail Chelsea Gohd at or follow her on Twitter Follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.Last year, a telescope captured the very first image of an "unseeable" black hole, dazzling the scientific community and space enthusiasts alike with a static picture of M87*, the supermassive object at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy. Going forward, the team hopes to continue observing M87, they told, not just in polarization but also "at different wavelengths, to build a more complete picture of the black hole's surroundings and probe magnetic fields in more detail," they added. "We still don't know all the details of how jets are generated, but we know that magnetic fields may play a critical role," Marti-Vidal said. The result is an interesting clue to how black holes feed on gas and grow," Dexter added. Our results indicate that the magnetic fields can push the gas around and resist being stretched. "The main finding is that we not only see the magnetic fields near the black hole as expected, but they also appear to be strong. (Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Goddi et al.)īut these observations didn't just reveal magnetic fields on the edge of the black hole in M87, they also show that the gas there is very strongly magnetized. This image reveals the structure of the magnetic field along the jet. This image shows the jet in the M87 galaxy in polarized light, as captured by ALMA. Related: Images: Black holes of the universe The polarized image we see tells us about the structure and strength of these magnetic fields very close to the black hole in M87, where the jet is launched," Dexter said. "Astronomers have long thought that magnetic fields carried by the hot gas near black holes play an important role in letting the gas fall in, and in launching relativistic jets of energetic particles out into the surrounding galaxy. The team's observations and this new view of the object in M87 is deepening scientists' understanding of the structure of magnetic fields just outside of a black hole, as it has remained a mystery how jets larger than the galaxy itself are emitted from the black hole at its heart. "These polarized receivers work in a way similar to that of the polarized sunglasses that some people use."īy showing the black hole in M87 through polarized light, the team got a better look at the object's event horizon, which is also known as the "point of no return" because it's the point at which no matter can get closer to the black hole without being pulled in. They also were able to better study the interaction with the object's accretion disk, which is a disk of hot gas and other diffuse material that falls in toward a black hole and swirls around it. "The radio telescopes of the EHT have receivers that record the sky signal in polarized light," Ivan Marti-Vidal, also a coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and GenT Distinguished Researcher at the Universitat de Valencia in Spain, told. To capture the black hole, the collaboration used eight telescopes from around the world, combining their power to create a virtual Earth-sized telescope (the EHT).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |