A team of scientists has found the magnetic fields that power the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, right outside its event horizon. The team theorizes that this magnetic field is what makes the black hole so powerful.
Understanding Magnetic Fields Will Help Us Understand the Universe
This is the first instance where magnetic fields are directly visible from the event horizon. The Milky Way is one of many galaxies sporting a supermassive black hole at its core, but having spotted these magnetic fields brings some changes to the game. The team of scientists used the Event Horizon Telescope to observe the magnetic fields around Sagittarius A. By putting the network of EHTs to work, scientists were able to see even compact black holes.
A Different Kind of Astronomical Exploration
This new adventure sets the astronomical community on a different kind of journey, and they hope to capture the black hole’s event horizon within the next couple of years. What they’re looking for now is for polarized light, but not just any kind. There’s a specific kind of signature that a magnetic field leaves behind, and it can be traced through that sort of polarized light. This could help retrace the magnetic field itself and discover patterns of neighboring ones.
Further research is naturally necessary in order to discover what exactly is it that causes the high-energy jets that black holes shoot. On the view that the team has acquired so far, they commented that the magnetic fields are dancing all around the place. The astronomical community is once again thrown in a journey that it was not prepared for but is only too happy to take on as they go on to discover more things about the structure of our galaxy, from how it came to be and how it is now.
