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Recent results from the EHT collaboration have revealed strong, ordered magnetic fields around Sagittarius A*, suggesting common properties of black holes. Detailed comparisons with the M87 black hole
Recent results from the EHT collaboration have revealed strong, ordered magnetic fields around Sagittarius A*, suggesting common properties of black holes. Detailed comparisons with the M87 black hole show similarities and point to universal properties of the black hole. Future advances in observation technology promise deeper understanding and more detailed imaging of black holes.
Earlier this year, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released a new image showing strong, ordered magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This revolutionary image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, taken for the first time in polarized light, shows a magnetic field structure very similar to that of the black hole in galaxy M87.
This suggests that strong magnetic fields may be a common feature of all black holes. The similarity also raises the possibility of a stealth jet from Sgr A*. These findings were published at: Astrophysics Journal Letters .
In 2022, scientists published the first image of Sgr A*, located approximately 27,000 light-years from Earth; This image showed that the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole looks quite similar to M87, although it is a thousand times smaller and less massive. . This led scientists to wonder if they had anything in common other than their appearance. To find out, the team decided to examine Sgr A* in polarized light.
Previous studies of the light around M87* have shown that magnetic fields around the giant black hole allow it to shoot powerful jets of matter into its surroundings. New images based on this study showed that the same may be true for Sgr A*.
“What we are seeing now is that there are strong, distorted and regular magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy,” said Sarah Issoun, NASA Hubble Einstein Program Fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). ) astrophysicist and project co-leader. “In addition to Sgr A* having a polarization pattern strikingly similar to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we have learned that strong and regular magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them. their”.
Light is an oscillating or moving electromagnetic wave that allows us to see objects. Sometimes light oscillates in the desired direction and we call this “polarized.” Although polarized light is everywhere, it is indistinguishable from “normal” light to the human eye. In the plasma around these black holes, particles orbiting the lines of force of the magnetic field create a polarization perpendicular to the field. This allows astronomers to see in increasingly vivid detail what is happening in the regions of black holes and map their magnetic field lines.
“By imaging polarized light from glowing hot gas near black holes, we directly infer the structure and strength of magnetic fields that create the flow of gas and matter that the black hole feeds and ejects,” said Harvard Black Hole Initiative Fellow and Co. -Angelo Ricart’s directorial project. “Polarized light teaches us much more about astrophysics, the properties of gas, and the mechanisms that occur when feeding a black hole.”
But imaging black holes in polarized light isn’t as easy as putting on a pair of polarized sunglasses, and this is especially true for Sgr A*, which changes so quickly that it doesn’t linger in the images. Imaging a supermassive black hole requires more sophisticated instruments than those previously used to capture M87*, a much more persistent target.
CfA PhD student and SAO astrophysicist Paul Thiede said: “It’s great that we were able to take a polarized image of Sgr A*. It took months of careful analysis to understand the dynamic nature of the first image and reveal its average structure. Creating a polarized image allows us to take a polarized image of the black hole.” Our models generally assumed highly turbulent magnetic fields, making it difficult to create a polarized image. Fortunately, our black hole is much calmer, making the first image possible. It does.”
Scientists are excited to take images of both supermassive black holes in polarized light because these images and the data they provide offer new ways to compare and contrast black holes of different sizes and masses. As imaging technology improves, more mysteries about black holes and their similarities or differences are likely to be revealed.
Michi Baubeck, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said: “M87* and Sgr A* differ in several important ways: M87* is much larger and absorbs material from its surroundings much more quickly. So the magnetic fields are also quite strong.” We might expect them to look different, but in this case they turned out to be quite similar, which could mean that this structure is common to all black holes. A better understanding of magnetic fields near black holes will help us understand how the jets form and are ejected from what we see in infrared and X-ray light. “It helps us answer many open questions, from just how powerful bright flares are.”
EHT has made several observations since 2017 and plans to observe Sgr A* again in April 2024. Images are improving every year as the EHT includes new telescopes, greater bandwidth, and new observing frequencies. The planned expansion over the next decade will allow high-quality videos of Sgr A* to be captured, reveal a hidden jet, and allow astronomers to observe similar polarization features in other black holes. Meanwhile, extending the EHT into space will provide sharper images of black holes than ever before.
CfA is leading several major initiatives aimed at significantly increasing EHT over the next decade. The Next Generation EHT (ngEHT) project is implementing a transformational upgrade of the EHT that aims to bring several new radio antennas online, enable simultaneous multicolor observations, and improve the overall sensitivity of the array. The NgEHT extension will allow the array to create real-time movies of supermassive black holes at the event horizon scale. These movies will allow us to examine the detailed structure and dynamics near the event horizon, highlighting the properties of the “strong gravitational field” predicted by general relativity, as well as the interplay between accretion and relativistic jet ejection that form large spaces. Scale structures in the universe.
Meanwhile, the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission concept will extend the EHT into space, producing the sharpest images in the history of astronomy. BHEX will detect and image the “photon ring”, a sharp ring formed by strong lensing radiation around black holes. The properties of a black hole are reflected in the size and shape of its photon ring, revealing the masses and spins of dozens of black holes, revealing how these strange objects grow and interact with their host galaxies.
Source: Port Altele
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