While scientists are well-familiar with how black holes end up sucking in everything, these cosmic objects largely remain mysterious.
Black Hole Jets
It turns out, however, that black holes do not take in everything. According to astrophysicist Eliot Quataret, who is a Charles A. Young Astronomy Professor on the Class of 1897 Foundation at Princeton, explains that though black holes are known to be objects that nothing else can ever escape from, a prediction made by the famous theory of relativity of Einstein shows that these cosmic objects are actually capable of losing energy.
The model has been widely accepted by scientists since the 70s. These scientists were already familiar with magnetic fields extracted from the spinning black holes' energy. However, the mechanisms of this phenomenon remained a mystery.
A team of astrophysicists from Princeton was able to conclusively determine that energy near the horizon of the M87, or Messier 87, black hole is actually going out and not in. The researchers were also able to find a way to test out the predictions that these cosmic objects expel rotational energy and to see whether it's the energy that results in incredibly strong bursts known as jets.
Alexandru Lupsasca, a former postdoc from Princeton, explains that the jets are similar to Jedi lightsabers that span a million light years. These jets can also stretch up to 10x the Milky Way galaxy's length.
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Mysteries of Black Holes
The new study about this phenomenon resulted in a core finding, which is that the direction of the spiraling magnetic field lines show the energy flow's direction. The team credits the insight to Andrew Chael, an associate astrophysics research scholar.
George Wong, a co-author of the study who is also a member of the Event Horizon Telescope team and an associate research scholar from the Princeton Gravity Initiative and an Institute for Advanced Study member, explains that if one brought it to Earth and converted it into TNT and blew it a thousand times a second for several millions of years, this would be equivalent to the energy expelled by M87.
For decades, scientists have been familiar with how black holes drag spacetime fabric as it starts spinning. Magnetic field lines end up getting dragged. This slows the rotation and results in the release of energy.
Lupsasca explains that their prediction holds that when one looks at a black hole and sees if there are any attached magnetic field lines, an insane amount of energy transfer takes place.
Though the flow of energy near the event horizon of M87 is outwardly streaming, the researchers say that the flow could go inside a different black hole in theory. They are quite confident regarding the link between magnetic field line direction and energy flow. They also think that the black hole's energy flow can be examined through the launch of the Event Horizon Telescope, which remains theoretical at this point.
The researchers emphasized in the study that they were not able to conclusively shed light on how the spin of the black hole powers the jets, despite how evidence points to this. Despite how their model's energy commensurates with the requirement of jets, the researchers could not factor out the possibility that rotating plasma beyond the black hole could be powering the jets.
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