[1/3] Black holes🔭🧪 do a lot more than 'disappear' things, they drive a complex system of material around them, and can also launch huge jets of magnetised plasma. Such jets whip up particles to very high energy, and M87 (of the first black hole image) has some powerful ones. Our new paper shows... - ThreadSky

profsera.bsky.social • 80 days ago

[1/3] Black holes🔭🧪 do a lot more than 'disappear' things, they drive a complex system of material around them, and can also launch huge jets of magnetised plasma. Such jets whip up particles to very high energy, and M87 (of the first black hole image) has some powerful ones. Our new paper shows...

Reposted from Event Horizon Telescope

The EHTC studied the spectacular flare observed during its second campaign on M87, involving over 25 ground-based and space-based telescopes. The authors report the first observation in over a decade of a high-energy gamma-ray flare.
arxiv.org/abs/2404.17623
#BlackHole #astronomy

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thomasjheaney.bsky.social•80 days ago

magnetized plasma - my new air guitar band name. Thanks.
This has some real gravity to it. Got my follow.

profsera.bsky.social•80 days ago

[2/3]...that in the same year that the bright spot in the black hole M87's ring shifted by a whopping 30 degrees, there was a big gamma-ray flare (the highest energy form of light). By looking together with other telescopes at the same time that we observe the black hole ring...

profsera.bsky.social•80 days ago

[3/3] ...we have a unique chance to understand these flares, and address a longstanding question in the field of astrophysics: what kinds of objects in space manage to excite particles up to energies millions of times higher than what we can achieve even in our best laboratories on Earth?

profsera.bsky.social•80 days ago

(If you've read this far and want more info, here's a link to the official press release!)

http://www.inaf.it/en/inaf-news/eht-m87-flare

robb.doering.ai•80 days ago

Fascinating! Thanks for advancing us all 😊

> For the first time, we can combine direct imaging of the near event horizon regions during gamma-ray flares from particle acceleration events and test theories about the flare origins

Have a favorite guess you can share with Bluesky?

robb.doering.ai•80 days ago

My complete naïveté likens this process to a whirlpool, in which case asymmetries in the flow would come from relative concentrations of some substance (or in this case, any substance!). Are we guessing this is along those lines, or is it maybe some crazy relativity stuff?

profsera.bsky.social•80 days ago

The processes near the black hole are sort of similar to the sun, but with much more extreme conditions. So one theory is magnetic reconnection, like in solar flares. But we’re not sure bc we can’t yet localize the active region. Hoping for a longer monitoring campaign in 2026!

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