Researchers Stun The World Once More After Releasing New Photo Of Black Hole With Magnetic Fields

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The world was stunned after the very first photo of a black hole was released to the public just two years ago, and just recently, an international team of scientists has released a new photo which shows the magnetic fields that surround it. Because of this, it has allowed researchers better look into the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy, which is described by NASA as ‘the home of several trillion stars, a supermassive black hole and a family of roughly 15,000 globular clusters,’ and how it manages to “launch energetic jets from its core.”

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According to Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in a press release, more than 300 researchers worked together on the project, after which they shared their findings in two different papers released in The Astrophysical Journal.


Event Horizon ‘Scope also managed to tweet what they had discovered, explaining, “For the first time, EHT scientists have mapped the magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves. With this breakthrough, we have taken a crucial step in solving one of astronomy’s greatest mysteries.”

It was back in 2019 when EHT scientists managed to capture a photo of a supermassive black hole that was sitting in the middle of M87, garnering the world’s full attention. Moreover, it was extra impressive considering that it was located at least 55-million light-years away from planet Earth.

When taking a closer look at the photo, one can see how the image shows an incredibly black central portion that happens to be outlined by a ring-like structure. At the time, scientists described the ring-like structure as “emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its even horizon.”

Yet, the newer photo that they managed to capture using polarized light has brightly colored streaks of light, which ‘can be seen corresponding with its magnetic field.’

CBC

According to Monika Mościbrodzka, a professor at Radbound Universiteit in the Netherlands and coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group, shares, “We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic field behave around black holes, and how activity in this very compact region of space can drive powerful jets that extend far beyond the galaxy.”

In addition, another coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and GenT Distinguished Researcher at the Universitat de València in Spain, Iván Martí-Vidal explains, “This work is a major milestone: the polarization 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.”


“Unveiling this new polarized-light image required years of work due to the complex techniques involved in obtaining and analyzing the data,” he adds.

Based on the EHT research teams’ collected data, these new observations can help give vital insights into how this galaxy has the ability to ‘project streams of energy thousands of light-years outward from its core.’

One of EHT’s collaboration members, Johgho Park, who happens to be an East Asian Core Observatories Association Fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taipei said, “The EHT is making rapid advancements, with technological upgrades being done to the network and new observatories being added. We expect future EHT observations to reveal more accurately the magnetic field structure around the black hole and to tell us more about the physics of the hot gas in this region.”

 

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