Scientists in Washington have gone beyond the initial groundbreaking images of black holes and revealed a new picture on Wednesday depicting the tumultuous happenings occurring around one of these voracious cosmic giants. The image portrays the source of a mammoth jet of high-energy particles shooting into space.
The planet-sized observational dish that facilitated the obtaining of the image was made up of 16 telescopes situated in various locations on Earth. The supermassive black hole featured in the picture is positioned at the core of a galaxy named Messier 87 (M87), which is located about 54 million light-years away from our planet.
A light year measures the distance that light can travel in a year, which equates to 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
In 2019, a photograph of this black hole, possessing a mass 6.5 billion times greater than our sun, was released, representing the first-ever image captured of such an entity. The previous year, another black hole was also photographed.
All of these images, which displayed only the blackness of the black hole along with a ring of luminous material plunging into it, and the latest one, were produced through observations made with various radio telescopes situated all over the world. However, the new image exhibits light produced at a longer wavelength, which extends the range of visible data.
Due to their inherent nature, black holes are challenging to observe, being astronomical objects that possess such strong gravitational forces that any matter or light captured within their reach cannot escape.
The majority of galaxies are constructed around supermassive black holes, with some notorious for consuming surrounding matter and emitting large and luminous jets of high-energy particles into space, extending beyond the galaxy from where they originated.
The latest image displays how the foundation of one of these jets interlinks with material revolving around the black hole in a structure resembling a ring.
"The picture highlights, for the first time, the correlation between the material that is pulled inward (accretion flow) near the central supermassive black hole and the emergence of the jet," stated Ru-Sen Lu, an astrophysicist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and the lead author of the research paper published in the journal Nature.
Gaining a comprehensive view of the environment surrounding a supermassive black hole can offer valuable insights.
According to Thomas Krichbaum, an astrophysicist and co-author of the study from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, "This discovery provides a better understanding of the intricate physics behind black holes, including the launching and acceleration of jets, as well as the connection between inflow and outflow of matter from the black hole."
Astrophysicist and co-author Kazunori Akiyama of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Haystack Observatory stated, "This achievement has been the desire of astronomers and astrophysicists for more than 50 years, marking the beginning of an exciting new era."
Lu, Krichbaum, and Akiyama are members of the international collaboration known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, which began in 2012 with the objective of directly observing the immediate surroundings of a black hole. The event horizon of a black hole is the point beyond which everything, including stars, planets, gas, dust, and all forms of electromagnetic radiation, is engulfed and cannot escape.
The EHT project has produced images of two supermassive black holes, including the first-ever image of Messier 87's black hole in 2019 and the image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), which was released last year. Lu stated that "We anticipate a similar environment to exist for Sgr A*."