(ORDO NEWS) — The supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy 1ES 1927+654, 239 million light-years from Earth and suddenly radiating 100 times more in visible and ultraviolet light, has likely experienced a polarity reversal an inversion of its magnetic field.
Such a conclusion was made by a group of astrophysicists led by Sibasish Laha from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, who published a corresponding article on the electronic preprint website arXiv.org.
In 2018, the data from the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae detected changes to this galaxy, and soon after that, the Swift space observatory recorded that its ultraviolet glow also increased.
A study of archival observations of this region showed that by the end of 2017, the galaxy really began to glow brighter.
Initially, it was thought that the rapid increase in brightness was caused by a large star approaching and collapsing with the supermassive black hole at the center of this galaxy, which contributed to the growth of the accretion disk, but a new study rejects this idea.
Scientists analyzed observations of the galactic flare in the entire available electromagnetic range from radio to X-rays and found that the intensity of X-rays fell very quickly.
This radiation is usually produced by charged particles moving in a spiral in powerful magnetic fields, which is why the suggestion arose of a sudden change in the magnetic field near a black hole.
At the same time, the intensity of light in the visible and ultraviolet ranges increased, indicating that some parts of the accretion disk experienced heating.
According to our calculations, when the accretion disk of a black hole is remagnetized, the magnetic fields initially weaken at its outer edges, as a result of which this disk can be heated more efficiently.
At the same time, a weaker magnetic field means that charged particles produce less x-rays. As soon as the magnetic field completes its polarity reversal, the disk returns to its original state.
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