The first black hole ever photographed continues to amaze researchers. Immortalize it Event horizon telescope In 2019, M87* was recently observed emitting a massive gamma-ray flare. Studying them may help scientists understand how particles behave near black holes.
The material is moving towards A Black hole It forms an accretion disk – a hot, swirling ring of particles that looks like a bright halo. This is actually part of the black hole that scientists captured on camera. The falling matter is accelerated by the black hole’s gravity, becoming very energetic. Sometimes, some matter encounters irregularities in the magnetic field around the black hole, and is ejected out into the universe as a luminous gamma-ray flare.
Researchers know that at some point in this process, the particles gain a huge amount of energy, but they are not sure exactly when this happens.
The gamma-ray glow emitted by M87*, which is located It is 55 million light years away from us At the heart of the galaxy M87 were photons, or beams of light, each containing several teraelectronvolts of energy, roughly equivalent to the energy of a flying mosquito. This is an amazing amount of energy for such small particles. “They travel at close to the speed of light, and we want to understand where and how they gain such energy,” said study co-author Weidong JinAn astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in A statement.
To try to find out more, Jin and his colleagues collected data from M87* using the Extremely Active Radiation Telescope Array (VERITAS) system in Arizona. They then analyzed it using a technique called spectral power distribution. “It’s like turning light into a rainbow and measuring how much energy is in each color,” Jin said.
This helped determine the astonishing amount of energy packed into the roughly 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) black hole’s glow. Further analysis revealed that the accretion disk had changed position relative to the jet, suggesting that the event horizon — the boundary where matter can no longer escape the black hole’s gravity — affects the size and path of the flare.
Future research into gamma-ray flares may help reveal when and how black holes transfer so much energy to the particles surrounding them.
