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The intervention galaxy leans over and increases the light from the background quasi RX J1131, creating four different images (shown in pink). The tiny flicker of these images allowed astronomers for the first time to measure the size of the Black Hole overheated Korona, revealing it to the solar system of this size. ; | Credit: X -ray: NASA/CXC/UNIV of Michigan/RCREIS et al.; Optical: NASA/STSCI
Black holes may be invisible, but their environment is not – and for the first time astronomers have directly measured the overheated “coron” surrounded by one of these space giants.
The supermassive black hole, RX J1131, is about 6 billion light -years from the ground and rotates more than half the speed of light; Although the monster itself remains hidden, it spins on nearby gas and dust, heating up to millions of degrees and flaming like a quasi – one of the most prominent objects in the universe. His the crownOverheated gas halo includes about 50 astronomical units, approximately the size of our solar system.
This measurement consisted of a rare cosmic alignment when the foreground galaxy, about 4 billion light -years of the Earth, and its stars acted as two stacked enlarged nations, creating a “dual scaling change,” which exacerbated the image of the black hole.
“This is the first time such measurement has been done” Matthew RybakA senior researcher at the University of Leysen in the Netherlands, Live Science said. “Basically we found a new way to look at what’s going on very close Black hole”.
Results, detailed a Pre -printing Astronomy & Astrophysics will soon appear, and provide a new tool to set an extreme environment around the black holes in too small, too small to solve even the best telescopes.
“It doesn’t look right”
The first -plan galaxy is so massive that its huge gravity bending and increases the RX J1131 light, creating four different quasi images through a phenomenon known as Strong gravitational lens; When the Rybak team re -collected a decade -old data collected by Atacama’s large millimeter/submillimeter array (Alma) radio telescope in Chile, they noticed small blinking of these images.
“Within a few days after looking at the data, we realized, ‘Okay, it doesn’t look right,'” Rybak recalled. “This is not even my main field of research, but it has become a pet project that we continued.”
If the source of these variants came from the black hole itself, all images would be brightened and shook together. However, further observations in 2022, thrown in just a day, revealed that the images flickered independently of each other.
“It’s a smoking gun – it has to be something along the way,” Rybak said.
That “something” is MicrolensationWhere individual stars in the first plan galaxy act as tiny lenses, briefly increase different parts of the quzar corona. Because Corona is so compact, these small -scale amplification have caused an independent flicker observed in all images, the authors noted in a new study.
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“We saw that data we couldn’t explain in a different way,” Rybak told Live Science. After analyzing these flashing, the team for the first time measured the width of the Corona solar system directly to turn a conventional quasium into a unique space laboratory.
A new window to black holes
In the study, not only did the researchers study, when exploring the coron, new measurement offers potential window into magnetic fields surrounding black holes.
Previous studies have shown that strong magnetic fields to adjust how much the gas falls and how much is pushed out, essentially By controlling how black holes grow over time; It is very difficult for these fields to measure directly, but theoretical models indicate a The connection between the corona millimeter wave exhaust -The light, derived from fast moving electrons, spirals around the magnetic field lines-its size and magnetic field strength.
“The main thing here is the understanding of how these black holes grow,” Rybak said.
This measurement is particularly pronounced as it was previously thought that the light of the millimeter wave is essentially static, even in months or years. “But it was one of the moments when you realize, ‘No, everything is changing and they are changing a lot,” Rybak said.
In order to follow and compare a millimeter radiation at different wavelengths, the team also plans to collect additional data from the NASA Chandra X-ray observatory-uniform X-ray telescope with sufficient spatial resolution to capture such tiny, lenses. But for Significant proposed budget reduction This caused a strong echo of the scientific community, and the 26-year-old exemplary telescope is likely to continue these observations.
Future Progress is likely to depend on Alma, which expands into lower frequency bands, covering the wavelength, where the Black Hole Coron shines brightest.
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Addition Alma, The Vera C. Rubin Observatory The high-resolution optical image-standard lentils quasars such as RX J1131 will be perfectly missed. The telescope whose The first images June was revealed, expected to reveal thousands of these systems and allow astronomers to investigate the optical flicker with unprecedented accuracy. “Rubin would be a revolutionary tool to do so,” Rybak said.
With increasingly sensitive telescopes, astronomers are just starting to explore many sources that flicker over a millimeter wave of waves.
“The impressive part is what we don’t know about,” Rybak said.