SCIENCE

New image of the black hole teaches us more about its surroundings

New image of the supermassive black hole M87.

Photo: EHT Collaboration

How does the material surrounding the black hole behave? Researchers from Chalmers have been involved in producing the new image that can be used in their models.

Calle Rosenqvist Calle Rosenqvist

Published 18 January 2024 - 16:37

Annons

Almost five years ago, we wrote about the first image taken of the light around a black hole. Researchers had then succeeded in capturing, with the help of the Event Horizon Telescope cluster, EHT, what exists on the immediate edge of a black hole.

The EHT has now released new images of the supermassive black hole M87 from observations made in April 2018, a year after the first image. The difference between the first and second image is that the new Greenland Telescope was put into operation before 2018, which provided significantly improved data handling and a completely new image of the black hole – entirely independent of the original image.

Annons

The new image shows a ring of the same size as the one from 2017, with the bright ring visible inside the black hole, something that was predicted before the image was taken by the theory of general relativity. However, what is new is that the brightest part has shifted by about 30 degrees compared to the first image from 2017.

In 2021, astronomers from Chalmers, among others, created a new image showing the polarization of the light around the black hole. Specifically, polarized light in galaxies indicates a magnetic field, something that in this image can show how the energy-rich jet streams are formed in M87.

In a mathematical simulation of how light behaves around a black hole, theoretical physicist Kip Thorne has calculated the most 'scientifically accurate' depiction of what a black hole would look like if one were to observe it.

In 2023, the researchers also created an image of a black hole located in the center of the Milky Way – our own galaxy. The object they focused on is Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), and the gas that is in its surroundings about 27,000 light-years away from us.