Astronomers unveil strong magnetic fields spiraling at the edge of Milky Way's central black hole
GAS? No, Sara Issaoun … PLASMA. You should know better.A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration—which includes scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA)— has uncovered strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
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"What we're seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy," said Sara Issaoun, CfA NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) astrophysicist, and co-lead of the project.
"Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we've learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them."
Well at least the author of the article realizes it’s plasma, not gas. He shouldn't be expected to understand the real implications of that but the *scientists* involved in this work should. But they don't. Here's another scientist being quoted …In the plasma around these black holes, particles whirling around magnetic field lines impart a polarization pattern perpendicular to the field.
GAS GAS GAS."By imaging polarized light from hot glowing gas near black holes, we are directly inferring the structure and strength of the magnetic fields that thread the flow of gas and matter that the black hole feeds on and ejects," said Harvard Black Hole Initiative Fellow and project co-lead Angelo Ricarte. "Polarized light teaches us a lot more about the astrophysics, the properties of the gas, and mechanisms that take place as a black hole feeds."
Now here's a scientist talking how hard it was to make the “image” …
But they didn’t actually take a picture, did they? As I’ve pointed out in numerous posts on this forum, their procedure for making those images involves having presupposed ideas of what they are expecting. As the Japanese scientists showed, if they're open to the possibility of jets, they can see jets. But if you're closed to possibility, you won't find jets. Of course, his work has been ignored, just like that of the plasma cosmologists over the years … because it doesn’t fit the mainstream's agenda … which is to keep the funding for the Event Horizon Telescope alive, even if it’s not going to change the life of a single person on earth for the better …. except those working on it at taxpayer expense.CfA postdoctoral fellow and SAO astrophysicist Paul Tiede said, "It is exciting that we were able to make a polarized image of Sgr A* at all. The first image took months of extensive analysis to understand its dynamic nature and unveil its average structure."
"Making a polarized image adds to the challenge of the dynamics of the magnetic fields around the black hole. Our models often predicted highly turbulent magnetic fields, making it extremely difficult to construct a polarized image. Fortunately, our black hole is much calmer, making the first image possible."
Meanwhile, astrophysicists are improving the EHT network on earth and planning to extend it into space ...
In other words, the cost is going up. Do you know that ngEHT is expected to cost? No? Well, neither to I because the astrophysicists are keeping information close to their vests these days (even though they’ve already picked the contractor for designing the ngEHT antennas). But to give you a starting idea just how much ngEHT might cost, consider that ONE of the several conferences they held on it had 500 (!) participants from over 30 countries. Yes, astrophysicists really want this toy.The CfA is leading several major initiatives to enhance the EHT over the next decade sharply. The next-generation EHT (ngEHT) project is undertaking a transformative upgrade of the EHT, aiming to bring multiple new radio dishes online, enable simultaneous multi-color observations, and increase the overall sensitivity of the array.
I do know the project involves building many (ten or more) new 6-12 meter radio telescopes around the world … telescopes that the already selected contractor describes as “truly unique instruments”. You know what that means …. Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching … in other words, expensive. I did discover that the Astro2020 panel (whoever that is) asked how much each telescope might cost and were told about $7 million. Never mind the operating costs and the cost of all the astrophysicists that will be working on processing the data gathered.
Speaking of which, the project also involved storing and processing MASSIVE amounts of data. The 2019 image required 5 PETABYTES of data. The ngEHT images will require many, many times more … they could exceed 100 PETABYTES, as one of the scientists working on it stated . And that will require bigger and faster computers ... or a lot more time. They also claim they will do many more things with the data to look at black holes than they did previously. Each of those will require additional resources, too.
Again, I have no idea of the cost, but it’s not going to be peanuts, and for what purpose is all this? How will what they learn …. if they really learn anything at all about black holes and aren’t just deluding themselves with gnomes …. affect any of our lives for the better? I can’t think of a single way. But it’s sure going to allow a lot of astrophysicists to live comfortable lives AT OUR EXPENSE for another decade or two. They are like the priests in past civilizations who forced citizens to build temples to their religion and monuments to themselves. And occasionally, they sacrificed one of the people to enhance their status further. Are our futures now being sacrificed to build the high tech alters that our astrophysicist priests want?Meanwhile, the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission concept will extend the EHT into space, producing the sharpest images in the history of astronomy. BHEX will enable the detection and imaging of the "photon ring"—a sharp ring feature formed by strongly lensed emission around black holes.