At the universe vast and mysterious, there is a protagonist who has become a true cosmic celebrity: the black hole M87*.
In 2019, humanity first witnessed an image of this cosmic colossus, an orange donut diffuse located 55 million light years from Earth, in the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), in the constellation of Virgin.
see more
3 signs embrace true love ONCE on October 3, 2023;…
Difficult personalities in marriage: how people manage…
Now, onerevelation about this Black Hole iconic surprises the scientific community and confirms fundamental predictions of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
An article published in the journal Nature on Wednesday (27) describes the most recent finding involving M87*.
Scientists and astronomers have confirmed that this supermassive black hole rotates, although they have not yet precisely determined the speed of its rotation.
(Image: Cui Yuzhu et al./Reproduction)
The iconic image of M87* was captured thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of radio telescopes that combined data from several interferometry stations distributed throughout the planet.
The historic feat, which revealed the image of the black hole for the first time, took place over several days in 2017, being revealed to the world in 2019.
Recently, in April 2023, the image was optimized with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), providing an even clearer view of this cosmic enigma.
One of the most intriguing revelations related to M87* is the observation of a powerful jet of radiation and particles erupting from the black hole's poles.
What makes the discovery even more remarkable is that the relativistic jet appears to swing like a cosmic pendulum on a roughly 11-year cycle.
Scientists attribute this unique wobble to gravitational interactions between the black hole, which is believed to be about 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun, and the disk of material that surrounds it, known as the Sun disk, accretion. Such dynamics provide “unequivocal evidence” that the black hole is rotating.
The researchers' analysis also revealed that M87*'s rotation axis is not perfectly aligned with the rotation axis of its accretion disk.
The misalignment between the spinning mass and the surrounding matter creates a significant impact on the spacetime around it, affecting the movement of nearby objects.
The revelation not only fascinates the scientific community, but also validates the predictions made by Albert Einstein in his Theory of Relativity.
The iconic image of M87* continues to reveal cosmic secrets that expand our understanding of the universe and remind us of the beauty and complexity of the cosmos around us.
