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New images of the first black hole ever photographed may finally shed light on the origins of the mysterious cosmic rays blasting through space at the speed of light.
A series of new images of the black hole - called M78 - show that it is launching jets that produce light that spans the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from invisible radio waves to visible light to super-powerful gamma rays.
These results indicate that each black hole has a unique pattern that depends on the intensity of the light it produces, and identifying this pattern can help reveal exactly what drives the currents of particles blasted from the core of M87.
Scientists believe that such jets, or beams of radiation, could be responsible for the high-energy cosmic particles traveling millions of miles through space and hitting the Milky Way. Some also end up crashing into Earth's atmosphere.
"One of the fundamental questions we're trying to investigate is where the high-energy particles come from. How are these jets launched, what's inside, and how the high-energy cosmic rays are accelerated - which appears to be coming from," Sera Markov, from the University of Amsterdam, told National Geographic. From the jets of a black hole. "
The Messier 87 (M87) center, where the supermassive black hole is located, is about 55 million light-years from Earth.
On April 10, 2019, the team responsible for the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed their findings from the first series of observations that produced the first image of a black hole.
While black holes are inherently invisible, the extremely hot materials orbiting in their midst form a ring of light around the perimeter, which reveals the center of the object itself based on its silhouette.
"We saw what we thought was invisible," said EHT Director, Shepard Doyleman, introducing the incandescent orange ring at the center of Messier 87 (M87) - our first direct look at a black hole.
This breakthrough added significant support to Einstein's theory of general relativity, and provided more information to answer long-standing questions about the nature of black holes. The new images of the black hole are now set to contain these answers.
"We knew that the first direct image of a black hole would be pioneering," said Kazuhiro Hada, of the Japan National Astronomical Observatory. "But to get the most out of this wonderful image, we need to know everything we can know about the behavior of the black hole at the time, by observing it on." The entire electromagnetic spectrum. "
It is the largest simultaneous surveillance campaign ever on a supermassive black hole with jets, according to the US space agency.
The NASA telescopes in question included the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Neil Gehrels Observatory, the Nuclear Spectroscopy Telescope (NuSTAR) array, and the Fermi Gamma Space Telescope.
Combining data from these telescopes from 2017, and current EHT observations, the scientists found that the intensity of electromagnetic radiation produced by materials around the supermassive black hole in M87 was the lowest on record.
Although scientists are looking to uncover the behavior of black holes, they hope to reveal the origin of energetic particles called cosmic rays that constantly bombard Earth from outer space.
The massive jets released from black holes produce energies that could be a million times higher than what could be produced at the most powerful accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider. It is in line with the energy observed in higher-energy cosmic rays.
However, the researchers note that more work is needed to answer a number of questions such as the exact locations at which the particles are accelerated.
Data captured in 2017 rules out the idea of producing gamma rays close to the event horizon - if black holes were the true source.
The key to settling this debate will be a comparison with the 2018 notes and new data collected this week.
The images show the black hole of M78 through the arrays of other radio telescopes from around the world, which were conducted in collaboration with 19 observations, on and around the Earth, and the work of more than 750 scientists.
Together, they hope to better understand how magnetic fields, particles, gravity and radiation interact in close proximity to a black hole.
Using a number of telescopes, the team was able to observe the M87 black hole with various techniques.
One of the telescopes detected the cosmic giant in visible light, discovered another ultraviolet light, and showed the black hole through gamma rays.
Combining data from these telescopes with current (and future) EHT observations, will allow scientists to conduct important lines of investigation into some of the most important and challenging areas of astrophysics study.
For example, the scientists plan to use this data to improve Einstein's theory of general relativity tests.
Currently, the main obstacles to these tests are the uncertainty about the material orbiting the black hole and blasting away in the jets, particularly the properties that determine the light emitted.
Source: Daily Mail
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