Black holes are well-known for their powerful gravitational fields from which nothing can escape, not even the light. However, the scientists do not know much about how black hole plasma jets formation occur.
Commonly, black holes stream strong jets of energy and matter when they devour space objects. Those jets extend on both sides of the black holes on distances of up to millions of light years and at speeds near the speed of light. Now, thanks to some new computer simulations, the scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley shed more light on black holes’ plasma jets and how they affect the black holes themselves.
The computer models used dozens of decades-old theories and lots of high-resolution observations from the Event Horizon Telescope which serves the purpose of providing the first real-time images of the areas where the plasma jets form.
New Computer Simulations Shed More Light On How Plasma Jets of a Black Hole Form
How can the energy in a black hole’s rotation be extracted to make jets? This has been a question for a long time,” said Kyle Parfrey, a former Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the Nuclear Science Division at Berkeley Lab and currently a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The new computer simulations revealed for the first time how electric currents that surround a black hole swirl the magnetic fields to produce plasma jets and why the particles that are crossing over the black hole’s event horizon can be detected by distant observers with negative energy that reduces the black hole’s rotational energy.
The computer models, carried out at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, revealed the Blandford-Znajek mechanism of a black hole (twisting magnetic fields that form jets) and the Penrose process that shows what happens when the black holes absorb negative-energy particles. “Even though it doesn’t necessarily contribute that much to extracting the black hole’s rotation energy, [Penrose process] is possibly directly linked to the electric currents that twist the jets’ magnetic fields,” said Kyle Parfrey. “We hope to provide a more consistent picture of the whole problem,” he also added.
Jasmine holds a Master’s in Journalism from Ryerson University in Toronto and writes professionally in a broad variety of genres. She has worked as a senior manager in public relations and communications for major telecommunication companies, and is the former Deputy Director for Media Relations with the Modern Coalition. Jasmine writes primarily in our LGBTTQQIAAP and Science section.