May 24, 2021 07:00:00

The mystery of a black hole's powerful jet jet is about to be unraveled

When you hear a black hole, you may have a strong image of inhaling everything, but on the other hand, we also know that it

jets high-temperature plasma. A new mystery about the energy source of jet injection emitted by black holes is being unraveled from images taken by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which combines multiple radio telescopes to observe supermassive black holes. And the scientific media Quanta Magazin summarizes.

Physicists Identify the Engine Powering Black Hole Energy Beams | Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-identify-the-engine-powering-black-hole-energy-beams-20210520/

Hubble Space Telescope by the results of the observation, in the center of most galaxies supermassive black hole that there is believed . Such a supermassive black hole injects a high-energy plasma jet, and it is believed that the light of the quasar , the brightest celestial body in the galaxy, is also emitted by the black hole as an engine.

It is also known that the mass of a supermassive black hole and the mass of a bulge called a bulge in the center of the galaxy are in a proportional relationship, and it is thought that the black hole in the center of the galaxy is deeply involved in the formation of the galaxy. In 2019, a black hole was discovered that sprayed high-energy jets and appeared to promote star formation across multiple galaxies.

EHT is an international project for observing such supermassive black holes, such as observing the supermassive black hole ' M87 ', which is the core of the Virgo Cluster. The images taken by EHT confirmed one hypothesis about the energy source of jet injection by supermassive black holes, and Quanta Magazin has released a movie explaining this discovery.

Black Hole Jets: One of the Biggest Mysteries in the Universe --YouTube


The most mysterious entity in the universe, located in the center of the galaxy, is the supermassive black hole.

Supermassive black holes, which have millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, inject high-energy plasma jets. This is the phenomenon with the highest energy known in physics.

In April 2019, EHT

released an image of the M87. It was epoch-making to capture the appearance of a black hole, which had been a theoretical existence for a long time, as an actual observation result instead of CG or simulation.

And in March 2021, EHT released a new image of M87. This image seems to be a clue for astronomers to understand 'the energy source of jet injection emitted by black holes'.

'Quasars are black holes in the core of most galaxies,' says ...

Roger Blandford , a professor of astrophysics at Stanford University. “Quasars are smaller than our solar system, but they can make the entire galaxy shine through a variety of mechanisms. They are very small, but very powerful engines,” commented Blandford.

The supermassive black hole in the center of the quasar is characterized by having a very large mass ...

At the same time, it is also an important feature that it 'rotates at high speed'.

In the theory of 'Blandford Naek mechanism ' proposed by Mr. Brandford in collaboration with Mr. Roman Naek in 1977, a magnetic field is created by attracting plasma by the rotation of a black hole, and it reaches thousands of light years ahead. It is said to emit a jet jet. In other words, the hypothesis is that the magnetic field generated by the rotation of a black hole is the energy source for a powerful jet injection.

'The jet itself is made up of very hot gases and travels with a magnetic field at speeds close to the speed of light,' said Blandford, explaining that radiation is emitted into space like a beam. I will.

Heber Curtis , an American astronomer, first discovered a space jet extending from the center of the galaxy in 1918. It was later discovered that this jet jet was from the M87.

The early 1970s, when Blandford was a student at the University of Cambridge, was a 'golden time for black hole research.' At the same time,

Stephen Hawking was also studying at the University of Cambridge, and Roger Penrose was studying black holes in London.

Meanwhile, Mr. Brandford, along with his friend Roman Naek, announced the Blandford Naek Organization.

The Blandford Naek Organization claimed that it was possible to extract energy from the rotation of a black hole, which was the source of energy for jet injection.

According to the Blandford Naek mechanism, when a rotating black hole twists a magnetic field into a spiral ...

It was said that electrons and protons were ejected from both directions of the black hole through the spiral of the magnetic field to form a plasma jet.

This was just a theory, but the image released by EHT in March 2021 showed the radio waves being polarized in a spiral shape.

'This image tells us that the magnetic field is spiral,' said Sara Isaun, an astrophysicist at Radboud University in the Netherlands and a project member at EHT. We need an orderly magnetic field as we see it. '

This spiral structure means that there is a magnetic force that pushes gas very close to the black hole, as predicted by the Blandford Naek Organization.

Isaun et al. Believe that this magnetic force is the energy source for jet injection emitted by supermassive black holes.

Blandford said supermassive black holes are very small objects but important big players in the galaxy.