Scientists from the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) announced Wednesday that they had been able to map magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves for the first time, releasing an impressive image of the supermassive object in the center of Messier. 87 (M87) galaxy.
The team of more than 300 researchers had produced the first image of a black hole 55 million light-years away in April 2019.
The researchers published their most recent observations in two separate articles in The Astrophysical Journal, which they say are key to understanding how the galaxy M87 is capable of “launching energy jets from its core.”
From data first collected in 2017, the scientists discovered that a significant fraction of the light in the region near the black hole horizon was polarized.
Light is polarized when it passes through certain filters or when it is emitted in warm regions of space that are magnetized.
Astronomers were given a sharper look around the black hole and the ability to map magnetic field lines in the surrounding area, examining how light polarized around it.
“These 1.3 mm wavelength observations revealed an asymmetric compact morphology of the ring source. This structure originates from the synchrotron emission produced by relativistic plasma located in the immediate vicinity of the ring. black hole, ”the group stated in its observational post. “Here we present the corresponding linear-polarimetric EHT images of the center of M87. We find that only a portion 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 level of ~ 15 percent “.
The group also noted that the polarization position angles are arranged in an almost “azimuthal” pattern.
The 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 it had performed “quantitative measurements of relevant polarimetric properties of the compact emission” and found “evidence of the temporal evolution of the polarized source structure” over the course of a week.
Data were performed using multiple independent imaging and modeling techniques.
In an attached version, the collaboration explained that the energy jets emerging from the core of M87 extend at least 5,000 light-years from its center.
Although most of the matter near the edge of a black hole falls into it, some of the surrounding particles sink in the opposite direction of the 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, according to the statement.
“All astronomical objects from Earth to the Sun to galaxies have magnetic fields. In the case of black holes, these magnetic fields can control how quickly they consume the matter that falls to them and how they expel some of that matter in narrow beams that travel close to the speed of light, “Geoffrey C. Bower, EHT project scientist at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Sinica Academy in Hawaii told Fox News on Thursday by email. “We showed that the fields are indeed strong enough to play an important role in the way what this black hole eats your lunch “.
The EHT collaboration is an evolving network of telescopes in 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: an “Earth-sized virtual telescope” with a resolution equivalent to that needed to measure the length of a credit card in the surface of the moon ”.
“This configuration allowed the team to directly observe the shadow of the black hole and the ring of light that surrounded it, with the new [polarized-light] image that clearly shows that the ring is magnetized, “the statement said.
“No one had ever done that kind of imaging,” Bower said. “Surprisingly, the data that make up this image is the same that was used to make the iconic first 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 polarizations from light, a process like putting polarized sunglasses on our telescope. ”