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First dungeon to be photographed directly is to reveal even more secrets.
In April 2019, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project released a historical photo of M87 *, the supermassive black hole that lurks at the heart of the M87 galaxy, which lies about 53 million light years from our own Milky Way.
The impressive image shows the silhouette of M87 *, which houses roughly the same mass as 6.5 billion suns. (It is impossible to photograph the inside of a black hole from the outside; these curious cosmic creatures devour everything, even light, that crosses the point of no return, which is known as the event horizon.)
Surrounding the shadow is a bright ring of radiation emitted by a rapidly moving, superheated gas that spins and falls into the jaws of M87 *. The ring is much brighter in its “lower” half, giving the feature a crescent appearance.
Related: First historical images of a black hole show Einstein was right (again)
That historical view of M87 * is a snapshot, capturing the black hole as the EHT saw it for a week in April 2017. In a new study, the EHT team goes back in time, gaining key information about behavior and appearance. of M87 *. until a decade ago.
The EHT functions as a radio telescope the size of land, integrating data from dishes from all over the world. The project reached maturity in 2017, and eight telescopes at six different geographic sites observed M87 * that April. But the EHT team studied the monstrous black hole before then, when the telescope was still magnifying to full power.
The new study looks at those old data – specifically, observations from 2009 to 2012, when the EHT had instruments at three sites, and 2013, when the project had expanded to four sites. That initial information was too scarce to generate an image, but in the new research, the scientists were able to deduce key features of M87 * and its environment using statistical modeling techniques.
For example, the study team found that the silhouette size of M87 * has remained constant over the past decade and is still in agreement with that of Albert Einstein. general theory of relativity by a black hole of its gigantic mass.
“In this study, we show that the general morphology, or the presence of an asymmetric ring, likely persists over time scales of several years,” said co-author Kazu Akiyama, a scientist at the Haystack Observatory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a statement. .
“This is an important confirmation of theoretical expectations, as consistency across multiple epochs of observation gives us more confidence than ever about the nature of M87 * and the origin of the shadow,” Akiyama said.
But not everything remained the same. In fact, the new analysis, which was published online today at The Astrophysical Journal, revealed that the bright ring surrounding the M87 * wobbles significantly over time, a result that surprised the EHT team.
“Actually, we see a lot of variations there, and not all the theoretical models of accretion [of material into a black hole] allow so much wobble, “said lead author Maciek Wielgus, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the same statement.” What it means is that we can start to discard some of the models based on the dynamics of the observed source. “
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The new results are giving astronomers an unprecedented look at the dynamics of black holes that will allow scientists to test general relativity like never before, members of the study team said.
“These early EHT experiments provide us with a trove of long-term observations that the current EHT, even with its remarkable imaging capabilities, cannot match,” said EHT founding director Sheperd Doeleman, who works at the University. from Harvard and the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, it said in the same statement.
“When we first measured the size of M87 * in 2009, we couldn’t have foreseen that it would give us the first glimpse of the dynamics of black holes,” said Doeleman. “If you want to see the evolution of a black hole over a decade, there is no substitute for having a decade of data.”
The current EHT will continue to study M87 * and the black hole at the core of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A *, which contains about 4.3 million solar masses. The project collects data only during a short window in March and April, when the weather tends to cooperate at its widespread observing sites.
The EHT’s 2020 observing season was canceled because several of the participating telescopes closed due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. But the team plans to make a strong comeback in 2021 with a hardened array consisting of 11 telescopes.
And there is always more information to analyze, including data collected during the 2018 season. (It takes a long time to integrate, process and interpret observations from the various domains, as you may have collected.)
“This is a really exciting time to study black holes!” EHT project scientist Geoffrey Bower, a research scientist at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Hilo, Hawaii, said in the same statement.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
