Scientists reveal new image of a black hole showing its massive gravitational fields

by Anagha Srikanth | March 24, 2021 | Mar. 24, 2021

Story at a glance

Black holes are parts of space-time where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape — including light.
The first direct image of a black hole was captured in 2017 using the Event Horizon Telescope, a virtual Earth-sized telescope.
The polarized image shows the magnetic field surrounding the black hole in what scientists called a “breakthrough.”

About 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo is a galaxy called Messier 87. At its core is a black hole — the first black hole captured in a direct image back in April 2017.

Nearly four years later, scientists have released polarized images of the black hole that show the magnetic fields of the surrounding plasma as a bright ring — and from the looks of it, they’re pretty strong, according to the authors of The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, the global network of radio telescopes that captured the image.

“We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes, and how activity in this very compact region of space can drive powerful jets that extend far beyond the galaxy,” said Monika Mościbrodzka, coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group, in a release.

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Two studies explaining the results were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on Wednesday, one explaining the polarized image and another the magnetic structure near the horizon of the black hole.

“If we now look at the image, we look at how those polarized vectors behave, then we can deduce the geometry of the magnetic field from that,” co-author Maciek Wielgus, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics, told Gizmodo. “That’s extremely interesting for us from this point of view of the physics of the jet, because we know what we need to have in order for our theoretical models of jet ejection to work.”

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Those models date back to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which says that “the observed gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of spacetime.” If that sounds like the stuff of science fiction, that’s because it is just a theory, but the authors say the size and shape of this new image “agree closely with the expected lensed photon orbit of a 6.5 billion solar mass black hole” like this one.

“The newly published polarised images are key to understanding how the magnetic field allows the black hole to ‘eat’ matter and launch powerful jets,” said Andrew Chael, a member of the EHT collaboration team and co-author of the studies.

So what does this all mean? According to the authors, “this work signals the development of a new field of research in astronomy and physics as we zero in on precision images of black holes on horizon scales. The prospects for sharpening our focus even further are excellent.”

And until then, it’s a pretty cool picture of a black hole.

For the first time, EHT scientists have mapped the magnetic fields around a black hole using polarized light waves. With this breakthrough, we have taken a crucial step in solving one of astronomy’s greatest mysteries.
Credit: EHT Collaboration#MagnetizedBlackHole #EHTBlackHole pic.twitter.com/sey42kAMSx

— Event Horizon ‘Scope (@ehtelescope) March 24, 2021