NASA’s new space observatory solves mystery involving blazars - the jets shooting from enormous black holes
Most galaxies are built around humongous black holes . While many of these are comparatively docile, like the one at our Milky Way’s centre, some are fierce - guzzling surrounding material and unleashing huge and blazingly bright jets of high-energy particles far into space. WATCH THE VIDEO: First look at monster black hole. Watch the latest News on Channel 7 or stream for free on 7plus >> Using data from the recently deployed Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) orbiting observatory, researchers this week offered an explanation for how these jets become so luminous: subatomic particles called electrons becoming energised by shock waves moving at supersonic speed away from the black hole. The researchers studied an exotic object called a blazar at the centre of a large elliptical galaxy named Markarian 501 located about 460 million light years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Hercules. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion...