{"id":153451,"date":"2025-09-18T21:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T21:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/153451\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T21:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T21:23:07","slug":"something-extremely-strange-is-happening-at-the-event-horizon-of-this-supermassive-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/153451\/","title":{"rendered":"Something Extremely Strange Is Happening at the Event Horizon of This Supermassive Black Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2019, scientists unveiled<\/a> the first-ever images of a black hole, M87*. Those observations kickstarted a wave of new investigations into how black holes work, how they grow, and how they change. And now, after a few upgrades, the Event Horizon Telescope network is back with another bombshell centered on M87*\u2014finding tantalizing evidence of previously unknown physics at the event horizon of the black hole itself.<\/p>\n

In a series of images taken by the EHT between 2017 and 2021, scientists observed a completely unexpected reversal in the black hole\u2019s magnetic fields\u2014in other words, its polarization flipped. They also detected strange jets blasting out of M87*. The observations provide researchers their most detailed view yet of the black hole and, perhaps as a consequence, the extreme conditions surrounding it. The findings are set to be detailed in an upcoming Astronomy & Astrophysics paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese results show how the EHT is evolving into a fully fledged scientific observatory, capable not only of delivering unprecedented images but also of building a progressive and coherent understanding of black hole physics,\u201d said Mariafelicia De Laurentis, study co-author and an astronomer at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, in a release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unexpected changes to a supermassive black hole <\/p>\n

M87* is a supermassive black hole that sits at the center of the galaxy M87, which is located about 55 million light-years away from Earth. This behemoth is estimated to be more than six billion times the mass of our Sun. Such a gigantic black hole should exert huge gravitational influence on any matter nearby, as seen in the ring of bright, orange plasma in the image.<\/p>\n

\"M87The new images show that M87*\u2019s magnetic fields appeared to be turning in one direction in 2017, but then settled in 2018, and experienced a reversal of direction in 2021. Scientists believe this flip in direction may be the result of internal magnetic structure and external effects. Credit: EHT Collaboration <\/p>\n

What caught astronomers by surprise, however, were stark shifts in the direction of the plasma spiral around M87*, technically known as its polarization pattern. It suggests that the area around M87* is an \u201cevolving, turbulent environment where magnetic fields play a vital role in governing how matter falls into the black hole and how energy is launched outward,\u201d the researchers explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s remarkable is that while the ring size has remained consistent over the years-confirming the black hole\u2019s shadow predicted by Einstein\u2019s theory-the polarization pattern changes significantly,\u201d said Paul Tiede, study co-lead author and an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tells us that the magnetized plasma swirling near the event horizon is far from static; it\u2019s dynamic and complex, pushing our theoretical models to the limit,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

A piece of the cosmic puzzle <\/p>\n

The observations suggest the polarization pattern at M87* flipped direction in 2017, before spiraling the other way in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt challenges our models and shows there\u2019s much we still don\u2019t understand near the event horizon,\u201d said Jongho Park, another co-author of the paper and an astronomer at Kyunghee University in South Korea.<\/p>\n

Black hole physics is, well, a bit of a black hole, with myriad unanswered questions and mysteries still to be solved. Any hint we can get helps to advance our science forward: Supermassive black holes like M87* are essential to how galaxies form stars, and they help distribute seeds of energy throughout the universe.<\/p>\n

In particular, the powerful jets emitted by such large black holes are a \u201cunique laboratory\u201d for astrophysicists studying gamma rays or high-energy neutrinos, the researchers said, offering a rich array of information about the role of black holes in cosmic evolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2019, scientists unveiled the first-ever images of a black hole, M87*. Those observations kickstarted a wave of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[3508,2035,49,48,35794,66,306],"class_list":{"0":"post-153451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astrophysics","9":"tag-black-holes","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-event-horizon","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}