(ORDO NEWS) — According to recent studies, astronomers have come to very interesting conclusions. Observations have shown that it is supermassive black holes that are responsible for super-energy gamma rays.
This type of radiation occurs, for example, when mass is converted into energy during fission reactions in nuclear reactors on Earth. However, in the case of black holes, gamma radiation is even more energetic than that emitted in nuclear reactors, and is the product of completely different processes.
It is believed that gamma rays are created as a result of collisions between light rays and high-energy particles born in the vicinity of black holes, through mechanisms that are still poorly understood. It is understood that these magnetic processes occur in very small and turbulent regions.
The consequence of these collisions between light and matter is that energetic particles transmit almost all of their momentum to light rays and turn them into gamma radiation, which ultimately reaches the Earth.
Scientists suspect that these collisions occur in areas penetrated by powerful magnetic fields, subject to highly changing processes, such as turbulence and magnetic reconnections (magnetic fields that merge together and produce an amazing amount of energy), which can occur in jets of matter that are emitted precisely from black holes.
Unfortunately, the study of these magnetic fields, which are billions of light-years distant from the Earth, requires very sensitive instruments and it is almost impossible to determine the exact moment when high-energy radiation occurs.
However, this is exactly what the research team led by Ivan Marty-Vidal, a researcher from the Astronomical Observatory, the main author of the study achieved.
His team used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), the most sensitive telescope in the world, whose work is based on millimeter wavelengths. Scientists were able to obtain accurate information about the magnetic fields of a distant black hole at a time when energetic particles produced a huge amount of gamma radiation.
In a recent article in Astronomy & Astrophysics, scientists reported observations of a black hole PKS1830-211, located more than 10 billion light-years from Earth.
These observations demonstrate that the magnetic fields in the region where the most energetic particles of the black hole jet form have changed their structure, in particular, over a period of time of only a few minutes. Here is what Dr. Marti-Vidal, MD:
“This implies that magnetic processes occur in very small and turbulent regions, as predicted by the basic models for the production of gamma radiation in black holes that link turbulence to gamma radiation.”
“On the other hand, the changes we discovered occurred during a very powerful episode of gamma radiation, which allows us to reliably relate them to high-energy radiation. All this brings us closer to understanding the origin of the most energetic radiation in the universe. ”
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