First ever images of black holes scientists unveiled the first image showing the violent events taking place around one of these predatory cosmic giants, including the launch point of a colossal jet of high-energy particles shooting outward into space.
The new image was obtained using 16 telescopes at various locations on Earth, essentially creating an observation dish the size of the planet. The supermassive black holes pictured resides at the center of a relatively nearby galaxy called Messier 87, or M87, about 54 million light-years from Earth.
A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). This black hole, 6.5 billion times the mass of our Sun, was the subject of the first image of such an object ever obtained, published in 2019, with another black hole imaged last year.
Black holes are inherently difficult to observe, celestial entities exerting a gravitational pull so strong that no matter or light can escape once caught in their grip.
Most galaxies are built around supermassive black holes. Some are known to not only absorb any surrounding material, but also to release huge and brilliantly bright jets of high-energy particles far into space beyond the very galaxy from which they originate.
How the base of such jet merges with material swirling around the black hole in a ring structure
It shows the base of the hot plasma jet, a blurred ring of light from the hot plasma falling into the black hole, and the central dark region a kind of donut hole created by the presence of the black hole. Plasma – the fourth state of matter after solids, liquids and gases, is a material so hot that some or all of its atoms are split into high-energy subatomic particles.
“It helps to better understand the complex physics around black holes, how the jets are fired and accelerated, and how the inflow of matter into the black hole and the outflow of matter are related,” said astrophysicist and study co-author Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio. Astronomy in Germany.
“This is what astronomers and astrophysicists have wanted to see for more than half a century,” said astrophysicist and study co-author Kazunori Akiyama of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory. “This is the dawn of an exciting new era.
Lu, Krichbaum and Akiyama are members of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, an international collaboration launched in 2012 to directly observe the immediate vicinity of a black hole. A black hole’s event horizon is the point beyond which everything stars, planets, gas, dust, and all forms of electromagnetic radiation is swallowed into oblivion.
The EHT project produced images of two supermassive black holes. The second released last year shows the one that inhabits the center of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A* or Sgr A* expect a similar environment to exist for Sgr A* as well,” Lu said.
Written by: Vaishali verma
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