If a jet is discovered, it could further bolster the theory that all black holes work in the same way and they all have relativistic jets of energy spouting out of them.
Dr Ziri Younsi, a member of the EHT team from UCL, said: “It is very exciting to see the first polarised images of the black hole in the heart of our galaxy.
“It is remarkable that the polarisation structure of Sgr A* is so similar to that of the M87* black hole, which we know possesses a prodigious relativistic jet.”
The lines on the image are the polarisation revealing the tendrils of the magnetic field, he told The Telegraph, and this tracks the movement of plasma swirling around the black hole.
Mariafelicia De Laurentis, the EHT deputy project scientist and professor at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, said that the study suggests a jet “might be universal among supermassive black holes” irrespective of size, mass and their environment.
Dr Younsi added that the Milky Way’s black hole’s apparent lack of a jet has long baffled scientists and this study “hints at the possibility there could be a jet hiding near the event horizon”.
He added that the findings are “still very preliminary”, but a very exciting possibility.
Like finally being able to open a book
Sgr A* is more than 26,000 light years from Earth and measures more than 14 million miles across. It is placed in the constellation of Sagittarius and has a mass of about four million Suns.
The vast object is the remains of a large star which exploded when it died and the ultra-dense remnants formed a black hole, which has such an extreme gravitational pull that nothing can escape, not even light.
EHT astronomers trained the telescopes’ power on the black hole, which the entire Milky Way orbits, and the polarised image strips away lots of energy to provide a look at the magnetic mechanics underpinning the object’s physics.
Geoffrey Bower from Academia Sinica in Taiwan said that this image is like finally being able to open a book and see inside after previously only knowing the cover.
“Because Sgr A* moves around while we try to take its picture, it was difficult to construct even the unpolarised image,” he added. “We were relieved that polarised imaging was even possible.”
Sara Issaoun, an astrophysicist at Harvard and Smithsonian who is co-lead of the project, said: “Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarisation structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we’ve learnt that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them.”
The findings and images are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
