Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, April 27 (Xinhua) scientists have made new progress in observing the black hole that humans "saw" for the first time.

CTOnews.com learned from the official account of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that an international research team led by researcher Lu Rusen of the Shanghai Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has used new observations at the millimeter wavelength to image for the first time the black hole shadow of the famous radio galaxy Messier 87, as well as the annular structure and powerful relativistic jets that show matter falling into the central black hole. The image shows for the first time the relationship between the accretion flow near the central supermassive black hole and the origin of the jet.

The black hole first "seen" by humans is located at the center of M87, a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo, 5500 light-years from Earth and about 6.5 billion times the mass of the sun. On April 10, 2019, scientists released images of the M87 black hole for the first time, and continued to observe and study the M87 black hole ever since.

The observations were obtained by the Global Millimeter Wave very long baseline Interferometry Array (GMVA) in conjunction with the Atacama large millimeter / submillimeter array (ALMA) and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). The addition of these two observation stations has greatly enhanced the imaging ability of GMVA. The relevant results are published in the current issue of the top international academic journal Nature.

Figure 1: the dense core of the image observed by M87 at 3.5 mm wavelength is decomposed in this band for the first time and presents a circular structure (embedded image) under high-resolution conditions. " We have seen black holes and jets in separate images before, but now we have taken panoramic pictures of black holes and jets in a new band, "said Lu Rusen, an astronomer from Shanghai Observatory, leader of the Sino-Demapu partner team and lead author of the paper. The matter around the black hole is thought to have fallen into the black hole in a process called accretion, but no one has ever directly imaged it. " The ring structure we saw earlier became larger and thicker at the wavelength of 3.5 mm. This shows that the extra radiation from the matter falling into the black hole can be seen in the new image. This allows us to have a more comprehensive understanding of the physical processes around the black hole, "he added.

It is worth noting that, in fact, this special new photo of the black hole was taken from April 14 to 15, 2018. It takes five years to develop a photo and overcomes many difficulties.

ALMA and GLT participated in the GMVA observation, thus improving the resolution and sensitivity of the intercontinental telescope array. This allows us to image the ring structure around the M87 black hole at the wavelength of 3.5mm for the first time. The ring measured by GMVA is 64 microseconds in diameter, the size of a 13-centimeter (5-inch) ring light that astronauts on the moon see when they look back at Earth. This diameter is 50% larger than the ring structure previously seen by the event horizon telescope (EHT) in 1.3mm observations, in line with expectations of relativistic plasma radiation in the region.

"by adding ALMA and GLT to the GMVA observation, the imaging ability has been greatly improved and we have obtained a new perspective. We did see the triple-toothed jet we learned about in early VLBI observations, "said Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany." But now we can see how the jet emerges from the ring around the central supermassive black hole, and we can now measure the diameter of the ring around the black hole in another band. "

Radio radiation from M87 is produced by the interaction between high-energy electrons and a magnetic field, a phenomenon known as synchrotron radiation. At the 3.5mm wavelength, the new observations reveal more details about the location and energy of these electrons. They also tell us something about the nature of the black hole itself: it is not very hungry. It consumes matter at a very low rate and converts only a small portion of it into radiation. "in order to understand the physical origin of this larger and thicker ring, we have to use computer simulations to test different situations," explained Keiichi Asada of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Finally, we come to the conclusion that the larger range of bright rings is related to accretion flow.

Kazuhiro Hada of Japan's National Astronomical Observatory added: "We also found something surprising in the data: in the inner region near the black hole, the width of radiation is wider than we expected. This may mean that there is not only gas falling into the black hole, but also a gust of wind blowing out, causing turbulence and chaos around the black hole."

The exploration of M87 is not over, as further observations and powerful telescope arrays will continue to unveil it. Jongho Park of the Korea Institute of Astronomy and Space Science said: "Future millimeter wave observations will study the time evolution of the M87 black hole and will obtain a multicolor view of the region of the M87 central black hole by combining images of different colors of" radio light ".

"Yes, the 3.5 mm wavelength image shown this time can be said to represent the latest achievements. However, in order to reveal the mystery of the physical mechanism of the formation, acceleration and collimated propagation of M87 central supermassive black holes and their relativistic jets, we need to take high-quality images of more colors, including black holes at submillimeter wavelengths of 0.8 mm or less, as well as panoramic images of black holes and jets at wavelengths up to 7.0 mm. "the future is very promising," added Shen Zhiqiang, director of Shanghai Observatory.

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