In April 2019, the world was haunted, even if only for a moment, by a nefarious void surrounded by a half halo of light. It was the first direct image of a black hole; more specifically, a supermassive gravitational abyss in the core of Messier 87, a galaxy in the constellation of the Virgin about 54 million light-years from Earth.
Now, a broad international collaboration of scientists has studied this data more broadly and, after purging it of some noise, has published the first polarized image of the black hole, which reveals the structure of its magnetic fields.
The research is published today in two articles in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The work describes the observational configuration of the equipment and the implications of the findings for understanding the theoretical interpretations of the black hole at the center of M87. The hole is a blazer, meaning it has a ray of energy and subatomic particles coming out of the accretion disk at almost the speed of light. The characteristics of lightning are defined by the magnetic fields that surround it, so understanding the structure of these fields provides clues to the most enigmatic question of lightning physics.
“If we look at the image now, we see how these polarized vectors behave, we can deduce the geometry of the magnetic field,” said co-author Maciek Wielgus, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics. Harvard and Smithsonian, in a video call. “This is extremely interesting to us from this point of view of jet physics, because we know what we need to have for our theoretical models of jet ejection to work.”
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You may find that the new image looks very similar to the original bomb image, but with a little more swirl on the accretion disk (anything that builds up around a black hole). What the new image describes, however, is a more specific detail of the black hole. The above view showed the total light of the plasmid nucleus of M87. When a black hole has weak magnetic fields, the plasma drags the fields in a circular fashion and light waves oscillate perpendicular to them, as if they were not disturbed by the fields. But when the magnetic fields are strong, the polarized pattern of light waves looks different. And if somewhere between these field intensities, the emitted polarized light takes on a more spiral shape.
“What this research shows is that the projected image of the M87 inner accretion flow very close to the black hole has a symmetrical or azimuthal appearance,” said co-author Richard Anantua, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian, in the same video call. “With this vertical magnetic field structure, it tells you that magnetic fields don’t just go with the rest of the accretion flux … magnetic fields are the key building of relativistic jets.”
The Event Horizon telescope is by no means a traditional telescope. It is the unified term for a growing number of observatories spread across four continents, timed to atomic clocks, that contemplate space together. By effectively creating a combined telescope the size of Earth, we can participate in a method of cosmological research called very long base interferometry. The math is complicated, but basically the different observatories observe an object and then explain the minute differences in the arrival of light on each plate to measure the object. As the planet rotates, more observatories collect data and can link that data to what has already been recorded. The more data you get, the sharper the image of a black hole.
In fact, the astrophysicists on this team have removed the curtain from black hole behavior, just as Dorothy and her crew did to the Wizard of Oz. The difference here, however, is that behind this curtain are a dozen more. They just improved the wizard’s outline a bit.
Wielgus said the “holy grail” of the future would be to see better the deeper functioning of the M87 core; specifically, the large-scale conditions that formed a huge jet of plasma, expelled it, collimated it, and accelerated it. Currently, there is too much noise in the image — and the data behind it — to see anything else, such as how an overexposed image can only show the most contrasted objects. With more telescopes in the array of the Event Horizon Telescope, the team will be able to see how it changes, changes the geometry of the magnetic field and configures the beam emitted from the galactic core.
“Magnetic fields are said to be lazy because they don’t work. Therefore, magnetic fields do not know that they exert magnetic forces parallel to them. They exert magnetic forces perpendicular to them, “said Anantua.” According to the definition of work, if your force is perpendicular to the direction of doing something, it will not do any work. But in reality, magnetic fields are so exceptionally lazy. that they only solve this and only use the black hole to do their job. “
Black hole, far from a big one nothing, are actually a setting for remarkable physics, a place where invisible forces shoot beams longer than any distance you have known into the cosmos, seemingly defying the famous inescapable gravity of the hole.
“This is a magnetic rail gun,” Maciek said, “where the energy source is the rotational energy of the black hole “.