Scientists have finally solved the biggest mystery of black holes

Interestingly, black holes seem to like to hide where the light is most intense, even though they don’t emit any light that we can detect. In fact, we now know that some of the brightest light in the universe comes from supermassive black holes. In fact, this light does not come directly from them, but from materials concentrated around the black hole as they actively digest large amounts of matter from their immediate surroundings.

About 1% of supermassive black holes have an “accumulation disk” of gas and dust swirling around them. When material from this disk falls toward the black hole, the plunging debris gets so hot that it shines brighter than the rest of its galaxy. One-tenth of these active black holes also produce jets that eject particles at 99.995% of the speed of light. Astrophysicists suspect accretion disks produce the jets, but until now they didn’t know how.

The brightest and largest of all-devouring black holes are at the center of galaxies known as blazars. Scientists have long pondered why jets (think light beams) emitted by supermassive black holes like blazars become so bright and the behavior of particles inside these jets.

Mystery of black holes solved

Using data from NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) orbital-based observatory, the researchers provided an explanation for the glow of these jets. It was discovered that electrons, which are very small subatomic particles, are powered by shock waves emanating from the black hole.

The blazar under study was discovered at the center of Markarian 501, a giant elliptical galaxy about 460 million light-years from Earth and pointing in the direction of the constellation Hercules. Blazars consist of a supermassive black hole that can generate two powerful jets perpendicular to the disk on either side, feeding material swirling around the disk. Scientists directly observed this black hole at the center of Markarian 501 because one of its jets was pointing directly at Earth.

Yannis Liodakis, an astronomer at the Finnish Center for Astronomy FINCA, lead author of the study, said: “It’s a 40-year mystery that we’ve solved. We finally had all the pieces of the puzzle and the picture they formed was clear.” said.