For something that does not emit light We can find that outAnd black holes They like to cover themselves in brightness.
Some of the brightest light in the universe actually comes from supermassive black holes. Well, not really black holes; It is the matter that surrounds them, as it actively reduces a wide variety of materials from its immediate environment.
These bright swirls of hot, rotating material contain galaxies called blazars. Not only do they glow from the heat of the rotating line, but they also radiate matter as magnifications of “flaming” beams through space.
Scientists have finally discovered the mechanism that generates the incredibly high-energy light that reaches us billions of years ago: shocks Black holeJets that accelerate particles to dizzying speeds.
“It’s a 40-year-old mystery, and we’ve been able to solve it.” says astronomer Yannis Lioudakis Finnish Center for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA). “We finally got all the pieces of the puzzle in, and the picture they painted was clear.”
Most of the galaxies in the universe are built around a supermassive black hole. These amazingly large objects are located at the centers of galaxies and sometimes do very little (eg arch a*The black hole at the heart of the Milky Way) and sometimes it does too much.
This activity consists of collecting materials. A large cloud in the equatorial disk gathers around the black hole and orbits it. water around the drain. Frictional and gravitational interactions in the extreme space around the black hole cause this matter to heat up and shine brightly in a range of wavelengths. This is one of the sources of light from a black hole.
Another — playing blazars — is twin jets of material shot perpendicular to the disk from the polar regions outside the black hole. Rather than falling toward the black hole, these jets are thought to be material from the inner edge of the disk, which is accelerated to the poles via the outer magnetic field lines and shot out at very high speeds approaching the speed of light. .
To classify a galaxy as a blazar, these jets must point directly toward the observer. We are the only ones on earth. Because of the particles’ intense acceleration, they glow with light across the electromagnetic spectrum, including high-energy gamma rays and X-rays.
How this jet accelerates particles to such high speeds has been a huge cosmological question for decades. But now, there’s a powerful new X-ray telescope called the Polarimetry Explorer (X-ray Imaging Explorer).IXPE), which was launched in December 2021, scientists hold the key to solving the mystery. It was the first space telescope to detect the direction or polarization of x-rays.
“The first X-ray polarization measurements of this type of source allowed for the first time direct comparisons with models developed from observations of other frequencies of light, from radio to very high-energy gamma rays.” says astronomer Imagolatha Donnarumma Italian Space Agency.
became IXPE Bright high energy material In our sky, a blazar called Markarian 501 resides 460 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules. For six days in March 2022, the telescope collected data on the X-ray light emitted by the Blazar plane.
At the same time, other observatories were measuring light from other wavelength ranges, from radio to optical data, data previously only available for Markarian 501.
The team soon noticed a strange difference in the X-ray light. Their direction is significantly more twisted or polarized than at lower energy wavelengths. Optical light is more polarized than radio waves.
However, the polarization direction was similar for all wavelengths and compatible with the flux direction. The team found that this is consistent with models in which shocks in aircraft generate shock waves that provide additional acceleration along the aircraft. Closer to shock, this acceleration is at its highest, producing X-rays. Along the plane, particles lose energy, producing lower-energy light and radio emission, with less polarization.
“As the shock wave passes through the region, the magnetic field strengthens, and the energy of the particles increases.” says astronomer Alan Marcher Boston University. “The energy comes from the kinetic energy of the object creating the shock wave.”
It’s not clear why the bumps happen, but one possible mechanism is that faster material in the plane catches up with the slower-moving agglomerates, creating collisions. Future research will help confirm this hypothesis.
Because blazars are among the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe and one of the best laboratories for understanding extreme physics, this research is an important piece of the puzzle.
Future research will continue to monitor Markarian 501 and transfer IXPE to other blazars to see if similar polarizations can be detected.
Published in the thesis natural astronomy.
