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Scientists from the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) announced on Wednesday that they were able to map magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves for the first time, broadcasting a stunning image of l supermassive object in the center of the Messier. 87 (M87) galaxy.
The team of more than 300 researchers produced the very first image of a black hole – 55 million light years away – in April 2019.
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The researchers published their most recent observations in two separate articles in The Astrophysical Journal, which they say are essential for understanding how galaxy M87 is able to “launch energy jets from its core.”
From data first collected in 2017, scientists found that a significant fraction of the light in the region near the black hole’s horizon was polarized.
Light polarizes when it passes through certain filters or when it is emitted into hot regions of space that are magnetized.
For the first time, EHT scientists have mapped magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves. With this breakthrough, we have taken a crucial step in solving one of astronomer’s greatest mysteries.
(EHT collaboration)
Astronomers got a sharper look around the black hole and the ability to map magnetic field lines in the surrounding area, examining the polarization of light around it.
“These observations at a wavelength of 1.3 mm revealed a morphology of a compact source in the form of an asymmetric ring. This structure comes from the synchrotron emission produced by a relativistic plasma located in the immediate vicinity of the black hole”, a the group said in its observation post. “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 southwest part of the ring, where it rises to the level of ~ 15%. “
The group also noted that the polarization position angles are arranged in an “azimuthal pattern”.
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Azimuth is the angle between a fixed point like true north, measured clockwise around the observer’s horizon, and a celestial body.
The team wrote that they had made “quantitative measurements of the 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 performed using multiple independent imaging and modeling techniques.
In an accompanying statement, the collaboration explained that the energy jets emerging from the core of M87 extend at least 5,000 light years from its center.
As most of the material near the edge of a black hole falls into it, some of the surrounding particles are blown in the opposite direction in jets.
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 magnetic fields just outside the black hole.
Only theoretical models with strongly magnetized gas could explain the event, the statement said.
“All astronomical objects from the Earth to the Sun through galaxies have magnetic fields. In the case of black holes, these magnetic fields can control how quickly they consume matter falling on them and how they eject a material. part of that material in narrow beams traveling at near the speed of light, ”Geoffrey C. Bower, EHT project scientist at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics Academia Sinica in Hawaii, told Fox News Thursday “We have shown that the fields are indeed strong enough to play an important role in how this black hole eats its lunch.”
The EHT Collaboration is an evolving network of telescopes across Chile, Spain, Antarctica, Greenland, France, Hawaii, Arizona and Mexico.
In order to observe the galaxy M87, the collaboration linked eight telescopes to create the EHT: a “virtual Earth-sized telescope” with a resolution “equivalent to that needed to measure the length of a credit card to the surface of the Moon ”.
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“This setup allowed the team to directly observe the shadow of the black hole and the ring of light surrounding it, with the new [polarized-light] image clearly showing that the ring is magnetized, ”the statement read.
“Nobody’s ever done this kind of picture before,” Bower said. “Remarkably, the data forming this image is the same as that used to create the first iconic image of a black hole published two years ago. It took us two years to analyze the data in a new way that allows us to separate the polarizations of light. , a process like putting polarized sunglasses on our telescope. “
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