Scientists trace 3,000-light year cosmic jet to first black hole ever imaged
Scientists tracked a 3,000 light-year-long cosmic jet escaping from the first black hole ever photographed to its likely source point with the help of “significantly improved coverage” from the Event Horizon Global Telescope, a new study published this week found.
The results, published Wednesday in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics,” could help determine exactly where and how black holes launch vast cosmic jets that travel at almost the speed of light.
M87 is a supermassive black hole located in the Messier 87 galaxy about 55 light years from Earth and 6.5 billion times larger than the Sun.
The first image of M87 was made public in 2019, after data was collected by the Event Horizon telescope in 2017.
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Scientists tracked a 3,000 light-year-long cosmic jet escaping from the first black hole ever photographed to its source point with the help of “significantly improved coverage” from the Event Horizon Global Telescope, a new study published this week found. (Hubble Telescope/NASA)
Not only is the black hole supermassive, “it’s also active,” NASA’s Dr. Padi Boyd explained in a video about the black hole’s discovery. “Only a few percent are active at any given time. Do they turn on and then off? That’s an idea… We know that there are very high magnetic fields to launch a jet. So this image is observational evidence that what we’ve been seeing for a while is actually launched by a plane connected to this supermassive black hole at the center of M87.”
M87 both sucks in surrounding gas and dust and spews powerful jets of charged particles from its poles that form the jet stream, according to Scientific American and Space.com.
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“This study represents a first step toward connecting theoretical ideas about jet launches with direct observations,” Saurabh, team leader of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said in a statement, according to Space.com.
A first image of the M87 black hole taken by the Event Horizon telescope and revealed in 2019. (National Science Foundation via Getty Images)
He added: “Identifying where the jet may be coming from and how it connects to the black hole’s shadow adds a key piece to the puzzle and opens the way to a better understanding of how the central engine works.”
The Event Horizon Telescope involves a global network of eight radio observatories capable of detecting radio waves from astronomical objects like galaxies and black holes that converge to create an Earth-sized telescope.
The elliptical galaxy M87 is home to several billion stars, a supermassive black hole, and a family of about 15,000 globular star clusters. (NASA, ESA and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgments: P. Cote, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics and E. Baltz, Stanford University)
Event Horizon refers to the boundary of a black hole beyond which light cannot escape, according to the National Science Foundation.
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The results came after studying data from the 2021 Event Horizon Telescope, but the study authors added: “While this result is robust to the assumptions and tests performed, definitive confirmation and more precise constraints will require future EHT observations with higher sensitivity and improved intermediate base coverage via additional stations and an expanded frequency range.” »
