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The jet emanating from the M87 supermassive black hole is tens of millions of times larger than the event horizon. In 2019, the Event Horizon telescope captured the
The jet emanating from the M87 supermassive black hole is tens of millions of times larger than the event horizon.
In 2019, the world was fascinated when the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) released the first image of a supermassive black hole located at the center of the M87 galaxy, also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486. constellation Virgo. Now this cosmic giant is surprising scientists once again with an intense gamma-ray burst that emits photons billions of times more energetic than visible light. Such a powerful explosion hasn’t been seen in more than a decade and provides valuable clues about how particles such as electrons and positrons accelerate near the extreme environments of black holes.
The jet emanating from M87’s center crosses the event horizon, or the black hole’s surface, by a factor of seven (tens of millions of times). The bright burst of high-energy radiation was significantly higher in energy than normally detected by radio telescopes from the black hole region. The flare lasted about three days and likely originated in an area less than three light-days in diameter, or just under 15 billion miles.
A gamma ray is a packet of electromagnetic energy, also known as a photon. Gamma rays have the most energy of any wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum and are produced by the hottest and most energetic environments in the universe, such as the regions around black holes. The photons in the M87 gamma-ray burst have energy levels up to several teraelectronvolts. Teraelectronvolts are used to measure the energy in subatomic particles and are equivalent to the energy of a moving mosquito. This is a huge amount of energy for particles that are trillions of times smaller than a mosquito. The energy of photons with energies of a few teraelectronvolts is much greater than the photons that make up visible light.
As matter falls towards a black hole, it forms an accretion disk in which particles are accelerated due to the loss of gravitational potential energy. Some are even directed away from the poles of the black hole in powerful currents called “jet”, driven by intense magnetic fields. This process is irregular and often causes a rapid burst of energy called a “flash.” However, gamma rays cannot penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. About 70 years ago, physicists discovered that gamma rays could be detected from the ground by observing the secondary radiation produced when they entered the atmosphere.
“We still don’t fully understand how particles accelerate near a black hole or inside a jet,” said Weidong Jin, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher and corresponding author of the paper describing the results published by an international group of authors working in this field. astronomy & Astrophysics . “These particles are so energetic that they travel at the speed of light, and we want to understand where and how they get this energy. Our work provides the most complete spectral data ever collected for this galaxy and simulations that will shed light on these processes.”
Gene was involved in analyzing the highest-energy portion of the data set, called very high-energy gamma rays, collected by VERITAS, a ground-based gamma-ray instrument operating at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona. UCLA was instrumental in creating VERITAS — short for Highly Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System — by developing the electronics to read the telescope’s sensors and the computer software to analyze the telescope data and model the telescope’s performance. This analysis helped detect a flare as indicated by large changes in brightness that deviated significantly from the baseline variability.
More than two dozen high-profile ground-based and space-based observatories, including NASA’s Fermi-LAT, Hubble Space Telescope, NuSTAR, Chandra, and Swift, as well as three of the world’s largest atmospheric Cherenkov telescope arrays (VERITAS), HESS). and MAGIC) participated in this second EHT and multi-wavelength campaign in 2018. These observatories are sensitive to high- and very-high-energy gamma rays, as well as X-ray photons, respectively.
One of the important data sets used in this study is called spectral energy distribution.
“The spectrum explains how energy from astronomical sources like M87 is distributed between different wavelengths of light,” Jean said. “It’s like splitting the light into a rainbow and measuring how much energy is in each color. “This analysis helps us unravel the different processes that drive the acceleration of high-energy particles in the jet of a supermassive black hole.”
Further analysis by the paper’s authors revealed significant differences between the position and angle of the ring, also called the event horizon, and the location of the jet. This shows that the physical connection between particles of different size scales and the event horizon affects the position of the jet.
“One of the most striking features of the M87 black hole is its bipolar jet that extends thousands of light-years from the core,” Jean said. “This study provided a unique opportunity to investigate the origin of very high-energy gamma-ray emission during the flare and to determine the location where the particles causing the flare are accelerated. Our findings may help resolve the long-standing debate about the origin of cosmic rays detected on Earth.”
Source: Port Altele
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