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Science & Tech.
Pradeep Kumar

03/04/21 09:25 AM IST

First Image of a Black Hole’s Magnetic Field

In news

Astronomers Have Captured the Most Detailed Photo of a Black Hole Ever—See the Magnetic Fields That Power It.

Details
  • Two years ago, astronomers managed to photograph a black hole for the very first time
  • Seen in polarized light, the fuzzy ring of light in the original image is now in focus, with crisp lines swirling in toward the center of what appears to be a bottomless pit, sucking in anything and everything within its grasp.
  • These images, taken in radio frequencies with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, might also explain the mechanism driving the massive jets seen erupting from this supermassive black hole.
Finding of the study
  • The new observations of the magnetic field structure just outside the black hole were compared to computer simulations of various conditions in these environments. Researchers found the only model which aligned well with observations featured strongly magnetized gas at the event horizon bordering the black hole.
  • By studying the shadow of the black hole and the ring of light surrounding it, researchers determined the ring is magnetized, and much of the light emanating from it is polarized, like sunlight seen through polarized sunglasses.
  • Magnetic fields can play a very important role in how black holes ‘eat.’ If the fields are strong enough, they can prevent inflowing material from reaching the black hole.
  • They are also important in funneling matter out into the relativistic jets that burst from the black hole region. These jets are so powerful that they influence gas dynamics amongst the entire cluster of galaxies surrounding M87.
Black hole
  • Black holes are perhaps the most enigmatic objects in nature, powering some of the most energetic – and unobservable – phenomena in our universe.
  • Due to their event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape, we cannot see a black hole directly.
  • But matter that falls towards a black hole is drawn in by its immense gravitational pull and becomes extremely hot and luminous.
  • As it approaches the event horizon, this matter is super heated by friction and moves close to the speed of light, emitting copious amounts of radiation
  •  It is radiation in the form of radio waves produced by this gas moments before it crosses the event horizon that the telescope is designed to detect.
Source: The Hindu

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