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NASA's Chandra telescope unveils mysterious details about black hole jets

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A new research has discovered unusual, lumpy "knots" within a jet stream from a black hole in the Centaurus. These particles blasting from black hole jets are traveling at nearly the speed of light — much faster than scientists had previously recorded. For this study the research team used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory , unlike the usual radio telescopes.




The concept of black holes was first suggested by John Michell in 1783, who called them "dark stars". However, the modern understanding of black holes emerged from Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity in 1915, which predicted regions where gravity could prevent anything from escaping. The concept of black holes is as mysterious as it is mind-bending, and many questions about them remain unanswered. One behavior, in particular, has left scientists baffled: at the edges of black holes’ accretion disks—the rings of material swirling around them like water down a drain—a small portion of this fast-spinning matter sometimes takes an unexpected detour. Instead of plunging toward the black hole under its powerful gravitational pull, this material appears to get rerouted, defying the forces that typically pull everything inward.


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Led by astrophysicist David Bogensberger from the University of Michigan, the study analyzed two decades of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to uncover surprising insights into black hole jets. Focusing on Centaurus A — a galaxy situated approximately 12 million light-years away and a key site for observing black hole activity — the research team used the data collected by the space observatory from 2000 to 2022, and created a computer algorithm to track the bright "knots," or lumps, within the jets. They found that one jet knot reached an astonishing 94% of the speed of light. This new finding significantly surpasses the 80% speed previously recorded in radio wave observations.


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This results in the emission of high energy particles outwards as a pair of jets blasting in opposite directions. These jets were observed to emit strong radio waves as well as X-rays. Further, they also noticed that the fastest knots were towards the mid regions of the jet, unlike what is observed in radio waves. It is yet to be seen what will be the implication of this discovery but the scientists hope to solve a few, if not all, mysteries of the black hole.
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