Scientists from the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration announced on Wednesday that they have for the first time mapped the magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves, creating an astonishing image of the supermassive object at the center of the Messier. 87 (M87) galaxy.
The team of more than 300 researchers took the very first image of a black hole in April 2019 – 55 million light-years away.
The researchers published their most recent observations in two separate articles in The Astrophysical Journal, which they say are key to understanding how the M87 galaxy is capable of “launching energetic jets from its core.”
From data first collected in 2017, the scientists found that a significant portion of the light in the black hole’s near horizon region was polarized.
Light becomes polarized when it passes through certain filters or when it is emitted in hot areas of space that are magnetized.
Astronomers got a closer look around the black hole and were able to map the surrounding magnetic field lines by examining how the light polarized around it.
“These 1.3 mm wavelength observations revealed a compact asymmetric ring-like source morphology. This structure comes from synchrotron emission produced by relativistic plasma located in the immediate vicinity of the black hole, ”the group explained in its observational publication. Here we present the corresponding linear polarimetric EHT images of the center of M87. We find that only part of the ring is significantly polarized. The resolved fractional linear polarization has a maximum located in the southwestern part of the ring, where it rises to the ~ 15 percent level. “
The group also noted that the angles of the polarization position are arranged in an almost “azimuthal pattern.”
The azimuth is the angle between a fixed point such as true north, measured clockwise around the observer’s horizon and a celestial body.
The team wrote that it had performed “quantitative measurements of relevant polarimetric properties of the compact emission” and found “evidence for the temporal evolution of the polarized source structure” over the course of a week.
The data was then output using multiple independent imaging and modeling techniques.
In an accompanying release, the collaboration explained that the beams of energy emanating from the M87’s core extend at least 5,000 light-years from the center.
While most of the matter near the edge of a black hole falls into it, some of the surrounding particles are blown out in jets in the opposite direction.
Astronomers still don’t fully understand this process or how matter falls into the black hole, but the new EHT image provides information about the structure of the magnetic fields just outside the black hole.
Only theoretical models with highly magnetized gas could explain the event, the release says.
“All astronomical objects from the earth to the sun and galaxies have magnetic fields. In the case of black holes, these magnetic fields can determine how quickly they consume the matter that falls on them and how they eject some of that matter into narrow beams that travel at the speed of light, ”Geoffrey C. Bower, EHT- project scientist at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Hawaii, Fox News told email Thursday. “We have shown that the fields are indeed strong enough to play an important role in the way this black hole eats its lunch.”
The EHT collaboration is an evolving network of telescopes in Chile, Spain, Antarctica, Greenland, France, Hawaii, Arizona and Mexico.
To observe the M87 galaxy, the collaboration linked eight telescopes to create the EHT – an “Earth-sized virtual telescope” with a resolution “equal to that needed to read the length of a credit card on it. surface of the moon “.
“This setup allowed the team to directly observe the shadow of the black hole and the ring of light around it, with the new [polarized-light] image that clearly shows that the ring is magnetized, ”the release said.
“No one has ever taken an image like this before,” said Bower. “Remarkably, the data that composes this image is the same that was used to create the iconic first image of a black hole released two years ago. It took us two years to analyze the data in a new way, allowing us to separate the polarizations of light, a process like placing polarized sunglasses on our telescope. “