Using a telescope the size of the planet, astronomers have captured the first image of this space oddity. Here's why that matters.
More than 50 million light-years away, in the heart of a giant elliptical galaxy calledMessier 87, a gargantuan beast is devouring anything that strays too near. Stars, planets, gas, and dust—not even light escapes the monster’s grasp once it crosses a threshold called the event horizon.
Today, scientists unveiled an image of that object, a supermassiveblack holecontaining the same mass as 6.5 billion suns. Resembling a circular void surrounded by a lopsided ring of light, this landmark image is theworld’s first glimpse of a black hole’s silhouette, a picture that creeps right up to the inescapable edge of the black hole’s maw.
BLACK HOLES 101The new image is the stunning achievement of theEvent Horizon Telescopeproject, a global collaboration of more than 200 scientists usingan array of observatoriesscattered around the world, from Hawaii to the South Pole. Combined, this array acts like a telescope the size of Earth, and it was able to collect more than a petabyte of data while staring at M87’s black hole in April 2017. It then took two years for scientists to assemble the mugshot.
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Before now, humans could only see indirect evidence that black holes even existed by looking for stars that seemed to orbit bizarre objects, by capturing radiation from the superheated matter swirling into them, or by seeing the extremely energetic jets of particles launched from their tumultuous environments. (Recently, astronomers caught their first glimpse of what seems to be a star becoming a black hole.)
Peering into the abyss
Powerful radio telescopes around the world can be synchronized to work together, enhancing their resolution beyond what any single telescope could achieve. The great distances among these installations, which participated in the Event Horizon Telescope's 2017 observations, increase their effectiveness.
NORTH
AMERICA
EUROPE
SPAIN
SPAIN
Arizona Radio Observatory
Submillimeter Telescope
UNITED
STATES
IRAM 30-meter
Telescope
MEXICO
MEXICO
Large Millimeter
Telescope
Large Millimeter
Telescope
HAWAII
(U.S.)
HAWAII
(U.S.)
Alfonso Serrano
Alfonso Serrano
AFRICA
James Clerk Maxwell Telescope;
Submillimeter Array
James Clerk Maxwell Telescope;
Submillimeter Array
Atacama Pathfinder Experiment;
ALMA
Atacama Pathfinder Experiment;
ALMA
CHILE
SOUTH
AMERICA
SOUTH
AMERICA
1,000 mi
1,000 km
ANTARCTICA
ANTARCTICA
South Pole Telescope
MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NG STAFF
SOURCE: EVENTHORIZONTELESCOPE.ORG
The night sky glimmers over the 66 radio antennas of the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), one of the main elements in the Event Horizon Telescope network.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BABAK TAFRESHI“We’ve been studying black holes for so long that sometimes it’s easy to forget that none of us has ever seen one,” National Science Foundation directorFrance Cordovasaid today during a press conference announcing the team’s achievement, held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
“We are delighted to be able to report to you today that we have seen what we thought was unseeable,” added project directorShep Doelemanof the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics. “What you are seeing is evidence of an event horizon … we now have visual evidence of a black hole.”
Six papers published today in theAstrophysical Journal Lettersdescribe the observational tour de force, the process of achieving it, and the details that the image reveals. One of the chief takeaways is a more direct calculation of the black hole’s mass, which tracks closely with estimates derived from the motion of orbiting stars. The data also offer some hints about how some supermassive black holes manage to unleash gargantuan jets of particles traveling at near light-speed.
“It’s truly remarkable, it’s almost humbling in a certain way,” Doeleman says. “Nature has conspired to let us see something we thought was invisible.”
Left:The elliptical galaxy M87, the dominant member of the neighboring Virgo galaxy cluster, is the home of several trillion stars, a supermassive black hole, and a family of roughly 15,000 globular star clusters. For comparison, our Milky Way galaxy contains only a few hundred billion stars
…PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, ESA AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA); ACKNOWLEDGMENT: P. COTE (HERZBERG INSTITUTE OF ASTROPHYSICS) AND E. BALTZ (STANFORD UNIVERSITY)(LEFT)ANDPHOTOGRAPH BY NASA AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA) (RIGHT)Orange on the moon
The Event Horizon Telescope initially set out to snag an image of the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy, theMilky Way. Called Sagittarius A*, that black hole is relatively puny compared to M87, containing the mass of just four million suns. Because M87 is one of the nearest, biggest black holes, the team also decided to aim the telescope there, hoping to eventually compare the two bruisers.
Seeing into the heart of our galaxy turned out to be a bit more complicated than staring down the barrel of a black hole in the next galaxy cluster over, which is why M87’s portrait is out first.
Rather than being a single snapshot, like the many spectacular photos taken by theHubble Space Telescope, the EHT‘s image is the product of a process called interferometry, which combines observations from multiple telescopes into one image. When separate dishes simultaneously observe the same target, scientists can collate the observations and “see” an object as though they’re using one giant dish that spans the distance between those telescopes.
STUNNING PICTURES OF SPACE AND ITS WONDERS
Over its lifetime, NASA'sHubble Space Telescopehas captured many stunning images. Among the most memorable is this edge-on mosaic of the Sombrerogalaxy. With its relatively
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)The intricately shaped Cat's Eye nebula is formed from concentric gas bubbles and high-speed jets ejected from the outer layers of a dying star. One theory is that the gases were released at 1,500-year intervals, giving the nebula its layered appearance.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, HEIC, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)Pillars of hydrogen gas and dust streaming from the Eagle nebula give birth to new stars. The largest pillar (left) is an estimated four light-years long and, like its neighbors, is being
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, STSCI, J. HESTER AND P. SCOWEN (ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY)This full-color map ofMarswas created with Hubble images captured when the planet was at its closest approach to Earth. More southerly regions are not visible because the north of the red planet was tilted toward Earth.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY STEVE LEE (UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO), JIM BELL (CORNELL UNIVERSITY), MIKE WOLFF (SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE), AND NASAA pulse of light emitted in 2002 from a red supergiantstarcalled V838 Monocerotis illuminates a cloud of interstellar dust. The dramatic whorls around the central star are trillions of miles across and were unknown to scientists until Hubble snapped this image in 2004.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA/ESA/HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)Streams of charged particles blasted from the sun collide with Saturn's magnetic field, creating an aurora on the planet's south pole. Unlike Earth's relatively short-livedauroras, Saturn's
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, J. CLARKE (BOSTON UNIVERSITY), AND Z. LEVAY (STSCI)A Hubble image of supernova 1987A shows a glowing wheel of debris ejected by a dying star some 20,000 years before it exploded. The ring, described as "cosmic pearls," is being
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, P. CHALLIS AND R. KIRSHNER (HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER FOR ASTROPHYSICS)Two galaxies, known collectively as Arp 87, distort as their gravitational fields interact. The larger of the pair, NGC 3808, is drawing stars, gas, and dust from the smaller. Both galaxies are spiral-shaped and located about 300 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)A face-on view of the Messier 74 galaxy shows billions of stars forming within its spiral arms. The clusters of blue are young stars, and the pink areas indicate concentrations of ionized
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE (STSCI/AURA)-ESA/HUBBLE COLLABORATIONA view of Jupiter taken by Hubble in May 2008 shows a new red spot (far left) on the planet's storm-roiled surface. The new blemish, which appeared in spring of 2006, is significantly
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY M. WONG AND I. DE PATER (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY)In 1999, to commemorate the ninth anniversary since its launch, theHubble Space Telescopetook this dramatic snapshot of Jupiter’s moon Io and its shadow sweeping across the gas
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY JOHN SPENCER (LOWELL OBSERVATORY) AND NASAThis 1995 portrait of the Cat’s-Eye Nebula in the Draco constellation is considered one of the most iconic photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Also known as NGC 6543, it is a
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY J.P. HARRINGTON AND K.J. BORKOWSKI (UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND), AND NASALooking more like a delicate flower on a stem, a pair of interactinggalaxiesknown as Arp 273 lie 300 million light-years away in the northern constellation Andromeda. Despite its tranquil
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from J.R.R. Tolkien'sThe Lord of the Ringsor a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND M. LIVIO AND THE HUBBLE 20TH ANNIVERSARY TEAM (STSCI)In 2004 Hubble revisited the psychedelic gas bubble known as the Cat’s-Eye Nebula, revealing at least 11 previously unknown concentric rings and knots of glowing gas blown out into
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, HEIC, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)Located 20,000 light-years away at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, this red star—complete with dusty cloak—caught the eye of Hubble in 2002 and again in 2005 in the above image
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA AND H.E. BOND (STSCI)As if playing a cosmic game of peekaboo, Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, is caught by Hubble’s camera in 2007 just before it slips behind the planet
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND E. KARKOSCHKA (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)
Looking like a mythical beast rearing its ugly head from a red sea in this famous 2002 Hubble photo, the Cone Nebula is actually a gigantic star-forming region 2,500 light-years away. While
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, H. FORD (JHU), G. ILLINGWORTH (USCS/LO), M. CLAMPIN (STSCI), G. HARTIG (STSCI), AND THE ACS SCIENCE TEAMIn 2000, Hubble captured a rare alignment of two galaxies, known collectively as NGC 3314. Two large spiral galaxies sitting 130 million light-years away appear to be lined up one
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)Resembling a human head in a parka, this shot of the Eskimo Nebula is one of Hubble's most iconic photos. The colorful gas cloud 5,000 light-years away represents the remnants of a
…IMAGE COURTESY NASALocated above the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope has been able to get some of the sharpest views of neighboring planet Mars. This 1999 portrait
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASAA cosmic angel seems to spread its shimmering wings in a newly releasedHubble Space Telescopepicture of the star-forming region called Sh 2-106
…IMAGE COURTESY ESA/NASA
Like a ghostly bubble hanging in space, SNR 0509-67.5 is the last gasp of a massive star snuffed out in a titanic explosion 400 years ago
…IMAGE COURTESY ESA/NASA
Even after more than 200 years of observations through telescopes, Neptune remains a planet shrouded in mystery. Nearly three billion kilometers away from the blue-green gas
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, E. KARKOSCHKA (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA), AND H.B. HAMMEL (SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE, BOULDER, COLORADO)Tucked away within the northern constellation of Ursa Major is this 46 million light-year distant galaxy that astronomers believe may be a Milky Way look-alike. Hubble snapped this
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE (STSCI/AURA)-ESA/HUBBLE COLLABORATIONThis eyelike appearance is marred by two sets of blood-red "fliers" that lie horizontally across the image. The surrounding faint green "white" of the eye is believed to be gas that made
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY BRUCE BALICK, JASON ALEXANDER, ARSEN HAJIAN, YERVANT TERZIAN, MARIO PERINOTTO, PATRIZIO PATRIARCHI, AND NASAConsidered the most detailed image ever taken of the famous Crab Nebula, this Hubble portrait shows off countless wispy, branchlike filaments of hydrogen gas throughout the
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, J. HESTER AND A. LOLL (ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY)Hubble snapped this 2002 image of what looks like Fourth of July fireworks but is in fact the remnants of a titanic stellar explosion expanding out into space. Considered the
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)The shadowy form at the center of this snapshot from Hubble is an actual hole within a thick cloud of gas and dust 1,500 light-years away in the winter constellation Orion. Like a streetlamp
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND H. BOND (STSCI)With spiral arms dominated by young blue stars and a core filled with an older yellow star population, this 100 million light-year distant galaxy takes center stage in this dramatic
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM, (STSCI/AURA) AND A. RIESS (STSCI)Astronomers believe this Hubble photograph offers a preview of what is in store for our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies billions of years from now. Known affectionately as "the mice"
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, H. FORD (JHU), G. ILLINGWORTH (UCSC/LO), M.CLAMPIN (STSCI), G. HARTIG (STSCI), THE ACS SCIENCE TEAM, AND ESAGround-based telescopes make the nebula pictured here look rectangular in shape, hence its name: the Red Rectangle. But images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that it
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA; ESA; HANS VAN WINCKEL (CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN, BELGIUM); AND MARTIN COHEN (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY)Planet Saturn, along with several of its moons, poses for a Hubble close-up in this 2009 portrait. Taken in 2009 when the gas giant was 775 million miles from Earth, this image shows
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAMThis view is of an unusual phenomenon in space called light echo. Light from a star that erupted nearly five years ago continues propagating outward through a cloud of dust
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASA, ESA, AND H. BOND (STSCI)The star cluster Prismis 24 hangs above the monstrous emission nebula NGC 6357, seen here in this 2006 image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Located 8,000 light-years from
…IMAGE COURTESY NASATwo astronauts work in the payload bay of space shuttleColumbiain March of 2002, completing upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope. The mission was the fourth visit to Hubble
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASAThe Hubble telescope drifts back into space with Earth as its backdrop on Christmas Day 1999 following a successful servicing mission. Seven astronauts aboard space shuttleDiscover
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASASunlight glints off the Hubble Space Telescope as it sits suspended over the cargo bay of space shuttleDiscoveryduring a February 1997 servicing mission. It was during this mission
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASAAt 43.5 feet (13.2 meters) tall, the Hubble Space Telescope towers over space shuttleEndeavour's payload bay during the first mission to upgrade the telescope's systems in December
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASASpace shuttleColumbiaand the Hubble Space Telescope drift 360 miles (579 kilometers) over the Earth's surface during a servicing mission in March 2002. During the mission, astronauts
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASADuring the first Hubble servicing mission in December 1993, astronauts installed new solar arrays (left) designed to reduce the thermal "jitters" experienced when the telescope transitioned from cold darkness into warm daylight.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASAAstronaut Story Musgrave moves through space shuttleEndeavour's cargo bay (center) during deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope's new solar array panels. Musgrave was on
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASAWith the Hubble Space Telescope looming behind him, astronaut Steve Smith prepares to use a specially designed ratchet during the telescope's second servicing mission in 1997
…PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASAAfter a 2002 servicing mission, the Hubble Space Telescope sports new solar arrays on its outside and new instruments inside.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NASATo resolve these supermassive black holes—which are tiny compared to their surrounding galaxies—the consortium needed to harness the power of radio telescopes all over the planet. In the end, six observatories in Mexico, Hawaii, Arizona, Chile, and Spain aimed their eyes into sky and stared at M87, which is the biggest galaxy in the center of the Virgo cluster. Functioning as one Earth-sized telescope, the network can resolve objects just one-ten thousandth the angular size of what Hubble can see.
“What we’re trying to image is really, really small on the sky,” says Caltech’sKatie Bouman, a member of the EHT imaging team. “It’s about the same size as if you were trying to take a picture of an orange on the moon.”
For several days, the team observed M87 in short radio wavelengths, because radio waves can pierce the murky shrouds of dust and gas surrounding galactic centers. During that observing run, which also included targets other than M87, the team gathered so much data—five petabytes—that the only reasonable way to transfer it was by shipping actual hard drives, rather than sending it digitally.
“Five petabytes is a lot of data,” says team memberDan Marroneof the University of Arizona. “It’s equivalent to 5,000 years of MP3 files, or according to one study I read, the entire selfie collection over a lifetime of 40,000 people.”
Then, because combining observations from different observatories is no simple task, four teams processed the data independently, using different algorithms and testing it against different models. In the end, the images each team produced were very similar, suggesting that the observations are robust and that the final snapshot is the most accurate possible. To be sure, it looks almost indistinguishable from simulations the team had produced in the years leading up to its release.
“It’s almost scarily as we predicted,” says EHT team memberSera Markoffof the University of Amsterdam. “I kept pulling it up on my phone at odd hours and looking at it.”
Soon, the team plans to share an image of the supermassive black hole nearest and dearest to Earth—but just because Sagittarius A* is closer, don’t expect it’s picture to look much sharper than the one they’ve already got.
“M87 is about two thousand times farther away, but its black hole is about two thousand times bigger,” says LordMartin Reesof the University of Cambridge, who is the U.K.’s astronomer royal. “They’re the same angular size on the sky.”
Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano bristles with observatories including the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (second from left), a member of the Event Horizon Telescope's 2017 observing run.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BABAK TAFRESHI6.5 Billion Splendid Suns
With the image in hand, scientists can now start to probe some of the deeper mysteries of the physics of black holes, including confirming their foundational underpinnings.
“What we’d really like to know from these observations is, are the properties of these black holes really what we expect if Einstein is right?” Rees says.
So far, it’s looking like Einstein was right—sort of. Although the famed physicist was skeptical that black holes even existed, solutions to his equations for the general theory of relativity, which hepublished in 1915, predicted that if the extra-massive objects populated the universe, they should be spherical, resembling a dark shadow embedded in a ring of light.
INSATIABLE FORCE
Although their name suggests emptiness, black holes are the densest objects in the universe, giving them enormous gravitational pull. Stellar black holes, formed from the collapse of giant stars, can compact the mass of 10 suns to the size of New York City. Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies can have the mass of billions of suns. Their origin remains a mystery.
JASON TREAT AND ALEXANDER STEGMAIER, NGM STAFF. ART BY MARK A. GARLICKSOURCES: AVERY BRODERICK, PERIMETER INSTITUTE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO, CANADA; UCLA GALACTIC CENTER GROUPM87
In 1781, astronomer Charles Messier discovered a bright spot in the constellation Virgo now known as Messier 87, or M87, a galaxy 55 million light-years away that contains several trillion stars. A very compact source of radio waves lies at the galaxy's heart: a supermassive black hole estimated to weigh some 6.5 billion suns.
1. The Singularity:According to Einstein’s equations, at the center of a black hole a star’s entire mass has collapsed into an infinitely dense, dimensionless point called a singularity. Singularities likely don’t really exist but point to a mathematical hole in our understanding of gravity.
2. Event Horizon:Extending at least seven billion miles around the supermassive black hole in M87, this is the boundary beyond which not even light cannot escape.
3. Static Limit:A black hole’s spin can twist space, speeding or slowing matter orbiting nearby. The static limit is the orbit where objects traveling at light speed against the black hole’s spin seem to stand still.
4. Accretion Disk:A whirling disk of superheated gas and dust likely spins at near light-speed around the M87 black hole. The disk emits heat, radio noise, and huge x-ray flares—some of which stretchmore than a hundred thousand light-years long.
5. X-Ray Jets:For more than a century, astronomers have spotted a “straight ray” jutting from M87. The towering jet forms as superheated gas swirling around the central black hole gets shot out along intense magnetic field lines. As electrons spiral along these lines, they generate radiationacross many wavelengths, from radio to x-rays.M87’s image matches that prediction, although the ring of light is a bit uneven, making it look like a bulgy donut. Still, that’s to be expected. Matter swirling around a black hole forms a glowing disk, and since part of that disk is moving toward us, it causes part of the circle to be a bit brighter.
“The whole thing’s moving, so some part of it should be beamed toward you—this is what they got wrong inInterstellar!” Markoff says, referring to the artist’s depiction of a supermassive black hole in the 2014 film. “There’s something very confronting about seeing this image and realizing you’re looking into some sinkhole in space-time,” she adds.
Based on M87’s event horizon, the team also measured its mass to be roughly 6.5 billion suns, placing it well within indirect estimates derived from the motions of orbiting stars. Problematically, though, that mass estimate is much larger than the number derived from the motion of orbiting gas, which is the easier, more commonly used technique when trying to weigh a black hole. But if that method isn’t exactly working, it’s time for scientists to figure out why.
“We’re scaling up the kinds of galaxies we can reach with gas dynamics, so it’s probably a really critical time to get that technique calibrated properly,” says astrophysicistJenny Greeneof Princeton University.
But while the new data helps with figuring out the black hole’s mass, it’s a bit trickier for the team to say exactly how far M87’s event horizon extends. Just as shadows or silhouettes often have fuzzy edges, so does the dark circle in the new image. Its exact width depends on a number of parameters that aren’t yet known, such as how fast the black hole is spinning and its exact orientation in space.
It’s likely that if the black hole were parked in our solar system, its event horizon would stretch far beyond the orbit of Pluto, perhaps extending more than 120 times the distance from Earth to the sun.
Curiously enough, that means you could walk right across M87’s event horizon and not even feel it—the black hole is so big that space-time is barely curved at this point. There, the pull of M87’s immense gravity would be the same across your body, from your head to your toes. But as you fell in closer, the curvature would intensify until you’re ultimately ripped into vertical, spaghettified strands (you would definitely notice that, and it would start to get uncomfortable much earlier).
Jet setter
No one really knows what, if anything, is at the core of a black hole, called the singularity. This puncture in the very fabric of the universe is surrounded by a curved, exotic expanse of space-time from which nothing escapes.
However, the new image should help astronomers hoping to understand more about the outside of M87, especially its fountains of extremely energetic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. Spanning about 4,900 light-years,M87’s visible jetis one of the more eye-catching spectacles in the nearby universe.
A black hole blasting matter into space might sound paradoxical, given that they generally tend to inhale matter, but these exotic objects are nothing if not baffling.
“It seems like they are just as good at pushing material away—jets, winds, and outflows—as they are at collecting material,” saysDaryl Haggardof McGill University, noting that scientists really have no clear idea about how black holes actually power jets.
Seeing the interface between light, matter, and M87’s event horizon might help scientists work out this enigmatic process. Multiple observatories previously aimed their eyes at the black hole and tried to untangle the engine behind its jet, studying it in wavelengths spanning the electromagnetic spectrum.
Such jets seem to originate from the disk of matter swirling around the event horizon, in a region called the ergosphere, Markoff says. Here, space-time never stands still and is perpetually rotating. It’s an environment characterized by intense magnetic field lines, gases heated to millions of degrees, and particles zipping around almost impossibly quickly. Interactions between those elements on microscopic scales somehow unleash the enormous power contained in the jets.
By comparing M87’s relatively active jet with eventual images of our own galaxy’s dormant black hole, Markoff says, “we can better understand the ebb and flow of the influence of black holes in the long course of our history of the universe.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/first-picture-black-hole-revealed-m87-event-horizon-telescope-astrophysics/
