March 27, 2024
Researchers released Wednesday a new photo from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) of potent magnetic fields that can be seen spiraling around a black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of a Milky Way galaxy.
According to astronomers, the supermassive black hole resembles in terms of structure with that of the M87 galaxy.
Their findings published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters suggested that such fields of magnet can be common to all black holes.
Sagittarius A* contains a mass of nearly 4.3 million times of the sun, however, M87 is much larger containing 6.5 billion that of our own star.
Dr Ziri Younsi, a co-author of the study and a member of EHT collaboration said: “It is very exciting to see the first polarised images of the black hole in the heart of our galaxy.”
Dr Younsi, who is also from University College London, said that “this exciting new study hints at the possibility of a jet hiding near the event horizon of Sgr A*”.
Another member of the research Sara Issaoun, with the Nasa Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics (CfI) at Harvard & Smithsonian told Space.com: "This new image tells us that near the black hole are strong, twisted, and ordered magnetic fields… we've believed that magnetic fields play a key role in how black holes feed and eject matter in powerful jets.”
Black holes are massive celestial objects present at the centre of nearly every giant galaxy. They are formed when a supergiant star dies and collapses on its own weight, releasing powerful jets of mass. Its magnetic pull is so powerful that everything that comes into its range is grabbed.