Scientists from the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) announced on Wednesday that they were able to map for the first time the magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves, releasing a stunning image of the supermassive object in the center of Messier Galaxy 87 (M87 ).
The team of over 300 researchers produced the first image of a black hole – 55 million light-years away – in April 2019.
Researchers have published their latest observations in two separate papers in The Astrophysical Journal, which they say are essential to understanding how the 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 horizon of the black hole was polarized.
Light is polarized when it passes through certain filters or when it is emitted in hot regions of space that are magnetized.
Astronomers were given a clearer look around the black hole and the ability to map the lines of the magnetic field in the surrounding area, examining how the light around it was polarized.
“These 1.3 mm wavelength observations revealed a compact asymmetric morphology of the ring-like source. This structure comes from the synchrotron emission produced by relativistic plasma located in the immediate vicinity of the black hole “, the group stated in its observational publication. “Here we present the corresponding linear-polarimetric EHT images of the M87 center. We find that only part 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.
Azimuth is the angle between a fixed point like the true north, measured clockwise around the horizon of the observer and a celestial body.
The team wrote that it performed “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 were then performed using several independent imaging and modeling techniques.
In an accompanying version, the collaboration explained that the jets of energy coming out of the M87 core extend at least 5,000 light-years from its center.
While most of the matter near the edge of a black hole falls into it, some surrounding particles are thrown in the opposite direction into jets.
Astronomers still do not 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 right outside the black hole.
Only theoretical models with strongly magnetized gas could explain the event, the statement said.
“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 on them and how they throw some of this matter into narrow beams that travel close to the speed of light, “said Geoffrey C. Bower, a researcher in the EHT project at the Institute of Hawaii’s Sinica Academy of Astronomy and Astrophysics told Fox News on Thursday, “We have shown that the fields are really strong enough to play an important role in how this black hole eats its lunch.”
EHT Collaboration is an evolving network of telescopes in Chile, Spain, Antarctica, Greenland, France, Hawaii, Arizona and Mexico.
To observe the galaxy M87, the collaboration linked eight telescopes to create EHT: a “virtual telescope the size of Earth” with a resolution “equivalent to that needed to measure the length of a credit card on the surface of the moon.”
“This configuration allowed the team to directly observe the shadow of the black hole and the ring of light around it, along with the new [polarized-light] image that clearly shows that the ring is magnetized “, it is said in the communiqué.
“No one has ever done this kind of picture before,” Bower said. “Remarkably, the data that make up this image is the same that was used to make the first iconic image of a black hole launched 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. ”