Andrew Chael
@thisgreyspirit.bsky.social
Somewhat functional assortment of 7 billion billion billion atoms. Astrophysicist taking pictures of black holes. he/him.🔭📡⚫🏳️🌈
"Magnetically arrested" means that strong and ordered magnetic fields at the black hole's event horizon push back on matter as it falls in. These magnetic fields also extract energy from the black hole's rotation to launch jets of plasma away from the black hole at near-light speeds.
November 8, 2023 at 5:06 PM
"Magnetically arrested" means that strong and ordered magnetic fields at the black hole's event horizon push back on matter as it falls in. These magnetic fields also extract energy from the black hole's rotation to launch jets of plasma away from the black hole at near-light speeds.
However, by placing an upper limit on the level of circular polarization in the image and comparing to a huge library of supercomputer simulations, we showed that our observations are consistent with the plasma feeding the black hole being in the "magnetically arrested" state. (credit: George Wong)
November 8, 2023 at 4:56 PM
However, by placing an upper limit on the level of circular polarization in the image and comparing to a huge library of supercomputer simulations, we showed that our observations are consistent with the plasma feeding the black hole being in the "magnetically arrested" state. (credit: George Wong)
The signal of circularly polarized light in our data is weak, so while we detected its signal we aren't able to conclusively determine its structure across the image of the black hole.
November 8, 2023 at 4:52 PM
The signal of circularly polarized light in our data is weak, so while we detected its signal we aren't able to conclusively determine its structure across the image of the black hole.
Light is circularly polarized when its electric and magnetic fields rotate as they move through space. In the new paper we show that light from close to the black hole event horizon becomes circularly polarized as it travels through hot, magnetized plasma in a process called Faraday Conversion.
November 8, 2023 at 4:47 PM
Light is circularly polarized when its electric and magnetic fields rotate as they move through space. In the new paper we show that light from close to the black hole event horizon becomes circularly polarized as it travels through hot, magnetized plasma in a process called Faraday Conversion.