A mysterious jet of energy has been captured emerging from a supermassive black hole, in a detailed photograph by the telescope that took the first picture of a black hole two years ago.
The Event Horizon Telescope, consisting of eight radio observatories that act as one Earth-sized telescope, caught the enormous jet escaping from a black hole in the centre of the Centaurus A galaxy. The findings were published in the Nature Astronomy journal on Monday.
This allows us for the first time to see and study an extragalactic radio jet on scales smaller than the distance light travels in one day
Michael Janssen,
astronomer
Supermassive black holes – which are the largest type and are millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun – destroy most nearby matter, including gas and dust, through their gravitational pull.
But some surrounding particles escape moments before capture and are blown out into space, creating jets.
For decades, astronomers have been trying to study how the phenomenon occurs.
"This allows us for the first time to see and study an extragalactic radio jet on scales smaller than the distance light travels in one day,” said Michael Janssen, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and Radboud University Nijmegen.
“We see up close and personal how a monstrously gigantic jet launched by a supermassive black hole is being born.”
In April 2019, the first image of a black hole was released, after the telescope captured M87 – a supermassive black hole with a mass more than six million times that of the Sun.
The latest observations were made at 10 times the frequency of any previous recordings, at a resolution that was 16 times sharper, allowing astronomers to study the black hole and the jet in detail.
“It’s amazing that we can study Centaurus A now with the extreme resolution of the EHT. We have never seen this nucleus before, as we didn't have sufficiently high resolution and we weren't looking at high enough frequencies,” said Maciek Wielgus, co-author of the study and researcher at Harvard and Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
"Centaurus A is our close neighbour in the intergalactic sense – it’s only about 10 million light years away. And its central region is very different from our own galactic centre – there’s so much more power emerging from the nucleus of Centaurus A.”
Through the findings, astronomers are trying to understand how jets are launched from these central regions and how they are able to extend over scales that are larger than their host galaxies without dispersing.
The new images show the jet is brighter at the edges than at the centre.
"Theoretically, jets can collide with galactic gas and heat up the edge, but the details of such a process so close to the black hole are a complete mystery,” Koushik Chatterjee, a study co-author and researcher at the Centre for Astrophysics and the Black Hole Initiative, said.
“The brightness contrast between the centre and the edge could potentially provide us with new insights about the plasma physics both within and around jets, making Centaurus A an exciting target for next-generation black hole simulations.”
Researchers now hope to photograph the central black hole of Centaurus A at even higher resolutions.
The wonders of space - in pictures
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Naga
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In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
The five pillars of Islam
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- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
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- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
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Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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LA LIGA FIXTURES
Friday
Granada v Real Betis (9.30pm)
Valencia v Levante (midnight)
Saturday
Espanyol v Alaves (4pm)
Celta Vigo v Villarreal (7pm)
Leganes v Real Valladolid (9.30pm)
Mallorca v Barcelona (midnight)
Sunday
Atletic Bilbao v Atletico Madrid (4pm)
Real Madrid v Eibar (9.30pm)
Real Sociedad v Osasuna (midnight)
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
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Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
