Jets of particles appear to be streaming from the center of the supermassive black hole M87* faster than the speed of light. But how could that be the case??! » Subscribe to Seeker!
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For the first time ever, Chandra X-ray Observatory observations show that sections of a jet are moving at greater than 99 percent the speed of light. A jet is a cloud of high-speed, high energy particles spewed out from the center of a black hole. And in this case, the black hole in question is M87*.
M87* exists in the center of the enormous elliptical galaxy Messier 87, and is roughly 55 million light-years away. Astronomers have been observing the supermassive black hole for some time now, watching M87*’s jet of material for years in different wavelengths including radio, optical and x-ray.
And just last year, the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first-ever image of a black hole: an image of M87*, which helped contribute to the black holes fame.
Astronomers have announced that M87* has now been observed shooting jets of physical material out into space at extreme speeds that might break the cosmic speed limit.
So how fast is the material actually moving and what causes the jets in the first place?
Find out the answers and more in this Elements.
#blackholes #cosmic #speedoflight #space #seeker #science #elements
Read More:
Black Hole Spits Out High-Energy Jets at Near Light-Speed
A stunning new image reveals two jets of high-energy material being spewed at nearly light-speed from the first-ever photographed black hole. The supermassive black hole, M87 — dubbed Pōwehi — lives 55 million light-years away from Earth in a galaxy called Messier 87. The new image of M87 was released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
A Powerful Energy Beam in Space Seems to Exceed the Speed of Light
The Hubble Space Telescope monitored its development between 1995 and 1999 and, after four years of photos, they saw the plasma ripple outwards faster than what was being emitted from the black hole, meaning it must be moving faster than the speed of light. In 2013, after 13 years of images, it appeared to move in corkscrew-like spirals, making this strange occurrence even more mystifying.
How are galaxies moving away faster than light?
Light emitted by the galaxies is moving towards us, while the galaxy itself is traveling away from us, so the photons emitted by all the stars can still reach us. These wavelengths of light get all stretched out, and duckslide further into the red end of the spectrum, off to infrared, microwave, and even radio waves. Given time, the photons will be stretched so far that we won't be able to detect the galaxy at all.
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