A black hole’s rotation can be caused by a magnetic field, which can emit hundreds of millions of times more energy than the sun and power its massive jets. Black holes in the universe are losing large amounts of energy, and this may be due to magnetic fields slowing down their rotation. Understanding these mechanisms could help solve the long-standing mystery of how giant jets are powered by black holes.

A new study of supermassive black hole M87* shows that energy near its boundaries flows outward rather than descending inward. Scientists have long theorized that a spinning black hole’s magnetic field extracts energy from its parent object and powers a giant jet that travels through space at nearly the speed of light. However, the question of how they do this is still unanswered. A team of astrophysicists led by Princeton University’s Andrew Chael uses data from the Event Horizon Telescope, a massive observatory made up of telescopes around the world, to study energy flows near M87*.

According to the most conservative estimates, the power of the beam emitted by M87* is between 10 and 42 ergs per second, or 250 million times the total luminosity of the Sun, which is equivalent to “the mass of the Earth exploding every second.” ” says Chale. “In fact, by some estimates, this energy is 1,000 times greater than his.” This highly unusual energy cannot come from the black hole itself, because anything that crosses the black hole’s event horizon is “trapped.” This means it must have been caused either by the rotation of the black hole or by an accretion disk of hot plasma around the black hole. Observational data from the Event Horizon Telescope supports the first hypothesis and appears to show how energy flows to the edge of M87*. The researchers thought this might be due to the magnetic field penetrating the black hole.

Experts described the process as somewhat similar to spinning a top with a string attached to the end. “The magnetic field extracts energy from the rotating black hole. The magnetic field rotates and, in a sense, compresses the black hole,” he says Chale. “The laws of physics are not violated because energy is released only by rotation, not by change in mass.” Black hole jets play an important role in the flow of energy from the center of a galaxy to its periphery. Therefore, it is important to understand how they are trained to understand the evolution of galaxies on cosmic timescales.

Black hole jets play an important role in the flow of energy from the center to the edge of a galaxy. Therefore, it is important to understand how they are trained to understand the evolution of galaxies on cosmic timescales. “But until we have sensitive images that allow us to observe processes close to the edge of the black hole, we cannot say with certainty that these jets are driven by the black hole itself,” he said. I will explain. “This can be done using the next generation of event telescopes, the Horizon Telescope, which uses even more observatories around the world to obtain better images, and even videos, of supermassive black holes. To do. However, this project is still in the design stage. ”