New EHT images reveal unexpected polarization flips at M87* that are giving scientists insight into the year-by-year evolution of a supermassive black hole’s ring.
New EHT images reveal unexpected polarization flips at M87* that are giving scientists insight into the year-by-year evolution of a supermassive black hole’s ring.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has unveiled new, detailed images of M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, that reveal a dynamic environment with changing polarization patterns near the black hole. The new images, constructed and validated by researchers from the University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute, show how the environment around the black hole may be changing more than we previously thought.
In 2017, the EHT observed a spiralling polarization pattern that is the signature of a large-scale twisted magnetic structure, confirming long-held ideas about how black holes interact with, and impact, their environments. But in 2018, the polarization all but disappeared. In 2021, the meager remnant began to spiral in the opposite direction. Astrophysicists are now wrestling with a solitary question: why?
Read More: University of Waterloo
