Name: For the Very First Time, We Can See A Black Hole's Magnetic Fields
Uploaded: 2021-04-23T18:10:16.000Z
Duration: 4 min 28 s
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in april of 2019 scientists working for the event horizon telescope collaboration stunned the world when they released the first ever picture of a black hole.

This photo of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy called M 87 has since become iconic.

And after almost two years of poring over their data, they've released a new version of their famous photo, One that could help solve a major mystery about black holes.

The mystery involves jets of matter that supermassive black holes can launch off into space at nearly the speed of light.

M 87 has a black hole at its center with just such a jet one that extends for at least 5000 light years.

Iconic image, the Hubble space telescope captured another jaw dropping picture of M.

87 that clearly showed this jet spearing its way across the cosmos.

The blue tinted beam is as stunning as it is puzzling after all, if there's one thing black holes are known for its their insatiable appetite, anything that strays too close and crosses a threshold, known as the event horizon gets sucked in by the black holes, inescapable gravity.

Even light traveling as fast as anything in the universe can go, can't break free matter far enough outside the event horizon can form an accretion disk that glows extremely brightly as it swirls around.

Most matter just outside the edge of the black hole eventually falls in, but some of it doesn't.

Instead, moments before falling into the jaws of crushing doom, it gets shot off in that spectacular jet when the HT first imaged and 87 supermassive black hole back in 2019, scientists thought the jet was created when the black holes spin interacted with its magnetic field, but they didn't have any proof.

Upon closer examination of their data, The scientists discovered that a lot of the light around the black hole is polarized, meaning the photons are vibrating in the same plane, light can become polarized in several ways, like when it's passed through a filter.

In this case, when light is emitted by plasma in a magnetic field, the field orders the plasma and acts as a filter that aligns the photons vibrations.

Using this new information, the astronomers could map the magnetic field lines at the edge of the black hole for the first time ever.

Understanding the magnetic field could provide the answer to how black holes can swallow some matter while ejecting other matter into space.

Scientists have used different models to explain how the gas around the black hole behaves, and the new data suggests the models with a stronger magnetic field are more likely accurate.

A strong magnetic field would account for the observed behavior where much of the matter in the ring around the black hole resists since pulp.

In fact, because of this work, scientists were able to estimate just how fast the black hole is eating, even though it has a mass of 6.5 billion suns, it's only absorbing 1/1000 of a solar mass for a year.

Astronomers also published images of the polarized light in M 87 jet, which helped them map the magnetic field lines in this spray of matter taken altogether.

These images can help astronomers understand exactly how the magnetic field interacts with matter from the event horizon, all the way through the jet.

There's still much more to come from the event horizon telescope, which is not one single observatory, but it's actually made up of several observatories around the world.

Working together in its current state, it's powerful enough to spot something the size of a credit card on the surface of the moon.

The network that connects the various telescopes is being upgraded and more observatories are joining the effort with more power at their disposal.

The scientists predict they'll be able to create a moving image of M-87 supermassive black hole to get a clearer understanding of what's happening soon.

If we're lucky, we'll see this photogenic cosmic wonder in motion.

This photo is the gift that keeps on giving.

Like when researchers revealed the photon ring hidden within it to learn more about the photon ring.

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