Astronomers who study supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are intrigued not only by the cosmic monsters themselves, but also by the colossal jets they shoot into space at almost the speed of light. The length of such jets can reach millions of light years. The physics of what creates and accelerates these jets to near the speed of light remains unclear. Now scientists have found that there is a way to solve this mystery.. The study was published in a journal in the journal Astronomy \u0026 Astrophysics, writes Space.

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Supermassive black holes are matter-eating objects found at the centers of galaxies.. Their mass is millions of times greater than the mass of the Sun.. Black holes feed on matter that swirls around them in the form of an accretion disk, but most of this matter is not fed into the black hole and flies out into space in the form of relativistic jets. They move at almost the speed of light and are millions of light years long.. Although scientists understand the principle of operation of these jets, it is not entirely clear what mechanism triggers them and why they gain such enormous speed. Now the study's authors are confident that an array of eight planet-sized ground-based radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will be able to solve this mystery..

Astronomers have used EHT telescopes to peer into the heart of a distant galaxy, where the jets of a supermassive black hole are forming and accelerating.. The galaxy NGC 1052 is located at a distance of about 60 million light years from us and at its center is a supermassive black hole, the mass of which is 150 million times the mass of the Sun. When viewed from Earth, the black hole emits two jets in different directions..

Although this was a promising target for imaging the jets with EHT, the center of the galaxy is too dim, so it was not certain that it would work. Nevertheless, astronomers managed to obtain important data.

Observations have shown that the region around the black hole in the galaxy NGC 1052 emits bright radio waves at a wavelength of one millimeter. According to the scientists, this region of the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum is available to the EHT to create the clearest images possible..

At the same time, scientists say the region around the black hole glows even brighter at slightly longer wavelengths, making it a prime target for the next generation of EHTs.. This improved array of radio telescopes will not only be able to take sharper images, but also videos of black holes..

Astronomers have found that the region around the black hole where the jets are created is similar in size to the ring around the supermassive black hole M87*, which became the first black hole to be directly imaged by scientists in 2019.

Observations of the black hole in the galaxy NGC 1052 showed that the magnetic field of the cosmic monster is 40,000 times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth. It is this that can prevent most of the matter from falling inside the black hole and helps launch two powerful jets.

Focus has already written about what problems scientists need to solve before they can obtain limitless and clean thermonuclear energy.

Focus also wrote that in fact black holes do not suck anything inside themselves and turn any object into spaghetti. Many people consider black holes to be " But it turns out that this is not the case.