"As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, an international team of astronomers discovered that the black hole's polarization flipped between 2017 and 2021, raising the possibility of a complex internal magnetic structure near its event horizon, the boundary in space beyond which nothing, even including light, can escape. The findings suggest that magnetic fields play a significant role in how matter gets sucked up into the black hole and how energy gets spat back out, while also highlighting how much there's still to learn about these cosmic monstrosities."
""What's remarkable is that while the ring size has remained consistent over the years - confirming the black hole's shadow predicted by Einstein's theory - the polarization pattern changes significantly," said coauthor and Harvard astronomer Paul Tiede in a statement. "This tells us that the magnetized plasma swirling near the event horizon is far from static; it's dynamic and complex, pushing our theoretical models to the limit." Thanks to many improvements and instrument upgrades to the EHT project, scientists now have a smorgasbord of new data to examine that "will certainly keep us busy for many more years," co-lead and Radboud University Nijmegen assistant professor Michael Janssen added."
The Event Horizon Telescope compared 2017, 2018, and 2021 observations of M87* and found its polarization pattern flipped between 2017 and 2021. The polarization flip indicates a complex, time-varying magnetic field configuration near the event horizon that influences how matter accretes onto the black hole and how energy is expelled. The bright emission ring size remained consistent across epochs, confirming the black hole shadow predicted by general relativity. Upgrades to instruments provided richer polarization data that enabled temporal comparison. The results imply dynamic magnetized plasma and challenge static models, motivating refined theoretical and simulation work.
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