Jason Dexter, coordinator of the EHT Theory Working Group and a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said the new observations indicate that the magnetic fields at the edge of the black hole are strong enough to "push back on the hot gas and help it resist gravity's pull. With these new findings, the team is now homing in on the role of strongly magnetized gas, EHT said. " With this new information, they can map the lines of the magnetic fields at the inner edge of the black hole to better understand their structure. The black hole’s boundary the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across. Just as polarized sunglasses can help people see better by reducing reflections and glare, researchers explained, "astronomers can sharpen their vision of the region around the black hole by looking at how the light originating from there is. 1 The shadow of a black hole is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. "This work is a major milestone: the polarisation of light carries information that allows us to better understand the physics behind the image we saw in April 2019, which was not possible before," said Iván Martí-Vidal, coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and researcher at Spain's Universitat de València. Most of the matter lying close to the black hole's edge falls in, but some of the surrounding particles manage to escape and get blasted far into space in the form of jets, a process that has long intrigued researchers. "We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes, and how activity in this very compact region of space can drive powerful jets that extend far beyond the galaxy," said Monika Mościbrodzka, coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and a professor at Radboud Universiteit in the Netherlands.īright jets of energy and matter emerge from M87's core and extend at least 5,000 light-years from its center, according to EHT. The new image captures that same view in polarized light, with brightly colored streaks of light corresponding with its magnetic field. The dramatic image shows a dark central region outlined by a bright ring-like structure, which scientists described at the time as "emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon," referring to the boundary marking the limits of the black hole. With this breakthrough, we have taken a crucial step in solving one of astronomy’s greatest mysteries.Ĭredit: EHT Collaboration #MagnetizedBlackHole #EHTBlackHole /sey42kAMSx- Event Horizon 'Scope March 24, 2021ĮHT scientists captivated the world in April 2019 when they released an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87, which is located 55 million light-years away from Earth. For the first time, EHT scientists have mapped the magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves.
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