Scholars at NTNU Contribute to Findings of the Magnetic Fields at the Edge of M87’s Supermassive Black Hole
A new milestone made by black hole researchers! Scholars at the Department of Physics are part of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration team. Since its first black hole photo shot two years ago, they image magnetic fields at the edge of M87’s supermassive black hole.
East Asian Core Observatories Association Fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics Jongho Park, Assistant Professor Hung-Yi Pu at the Department of Physics of NTNU and Assistant Professor Cheng-Yu Kuo at the Department of Physics of National Sun Yat-sen University held a press conference on March 25th. Pu thinks that the image captured this time are consistent with the black hole image two years ago. The results of this research reveal the distribution and structure of the magnetic field and most of the numerical simulations are consistent with the obtained magnetic field images.
Coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and a professor at Radboud Universiteit in the Netherlands Monika Mościbrodzka said that We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes, and how activity in this very compact region of space can drive powerful jets that extend far beyond the galaxy. The research result was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on 24th.
Cheng-Yu Kuo said that “The polarization signal is very weak and the data processing process is very difficult. However, Taiwan’s EHT members contributed a lot of effort to data correction and analysis to get this polarized image."
Astrophysicist Andrew Chael at Princeton University who is part of the Event Horizon team said that the direction and intensity of the polarization in the image tells us about the magnetic fields near the event horizon of the black hole.
EHT collaboration member Jongho Park concluded that “The EHT is making rapid advancements, with technological upgrades being done to the network and new observatories being added. We expect future EHT observations to reveal more accurately the magnetic field structure around the black hole and to tell us more about the physics of the hot gas in this region.”