The spiraling light at the edge of a distant supermassive black hole is believed to have the potential to help matter escape from being consumed by this cosmic titan. Also known as M87*, this enormous black hole has a mass equivalent to around 6.5 billion suns. In 2019, the image of M87*, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), was the first-ever glimpse of the surrounding environment of a black hole obtained by humanity.
The EHT Collaboration, credited for the groundbreaking image, have modeled the way the electric fields of light rotate around the supermassive black hole, located around 54 million light-years from Earth. This polarized light, with waves that vibrate on a single plane, contains information about the magnetic field and the particles accelerated to near-light-speeds around the black hole. Scientists suggest that these magnetic fields could keep M87’s black hole from consuming matter and instead launch it into space as highly collimated jets at almost the speed of light.
“Circular polarization is the final signal we looked for in the EHT’s first observations of the M87 black hole, and it (the polarization) was by far the hardest to analyze,” said Andrew Chael, project coordinator at Princeton University and co-author of the study. These new results provide confidence that our picture of a strong magnetic field around the black hole is accurate.
Two years after the release of the image of the supermassive black hole in M87, the EHT Collaboration released a second stunning look, showing, for the first time, polarized light around a black hole as well as the direction of oscillating electric fields. Researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Northern Chile, a reference antenna for the EHT, to take a closer look. ALMA is an array of 66 antennas in the Chilean desert that can seek longer wavelengths of light through cosmic dusty environments like black holes.
Altogether, the researchers’ data demonstrate the strong and ordered magnetic fields around M87* and the influence they have on the surrounding matter. The findings are detailed in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.
