The mystery of the Black Hole Jet is Solved with the help of NASA's IXPE.
The Black Hole Jet Mystery is a 40-year-old mystery that astronomers have solved with the help of NASA's IXPE. They finally had all of the pieces of the puzzle, and the picture they made was clear.
What is the Black Hole Jet Mystery -
Some of the brightest and most energetic celestial objects in the sky are called blazars.
Blazars consist of a supermassive black hole feeding off material whirling around it in a disk, which can create two powerful jets perpendicular to the disk on each side.
A blazar is particularly bright because one of its powerful and strong jets of high-speed particles points straight at Earth.
Black Hole Jet Mystery -For decades, scientists have been puzzled: "How do particles in these jets get accelerated to such high energies?"
Astronomers get closer to an answer thanks to NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE.
Astronomers find that the best explanation for particle acceleration is a shock wave within the jet, in a new study published in the journal Nature.
How did IXPE help astronomers get closer to a solution?
Earth-orbiting IXPE satellite, launched on December 9, 2021, provides a special type of data that has never been accessible from space before.
The latest study used IXPE to point at Markarian 501, a blazar in the constellation Hercules. This active black hole system is at the center of a large elliptical galaxy.
IXPE detects the average direction and intensity of the electric field of light waves that make up X-rays since this new data includes the measurement of X-ray light’s polarization.
Because the atmosphere absorbs X-rays from space, telescopes on Earth are unable to access information about the orientation of the electric field and the extent of polarization.
IXPE observed "Markarian 501" for 3 days in early March of 2022, and then again 2 weeks later.
During these observations, astronomers collected data about the Blazar in a wide range of wavelengths of light including Radio, Optical, and X-ray.
They found X-ray light is more polarized than optical, which is more polarized than radio. But the polarised light's direction was the same for all the wavelengths of light observed and also aligned with the jet's direction.
After comparing their data with theoretical models, the astronomers' team found that this data most closely matched a scenario in which a shock wave accelerates the jet particles.