Since the centre of the Milky Way contains a supermassive black hole, astronomers believe it’s acting like a gigantic particle accelerator, smashing protons together and releasing high energy gamma rays.
Astronomers at The University of Arizona, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Adelaide (Australia) think they understand the mechanism at work here. The intense magnetic field around the black hole accelerates protons and smashes them together. These collisions release a torrent of particles moving nearly the speed of light as well as the gamma rays we detect here on Earth.
The astronomers developed a simulation, where ejected particles interact with material surrounding the supermassive black hole. They calculated the magnetic force required to impart these enormous particle velocities, and the energies released as they smash and interact with the surrounding material.
And we have a relatively quiet black hole. Just imagine what’s happening what’s happening around an actively feeding supermassive black hole.
Original Source: University of Arizona News Release
Any event in the cosmos generates gravitational waves, the bigger the event, the more disturbance.…
During the Space Race, scientists in both the United States and the Soviet Union investigated…
The Milky Way has a missing pulsar problem in its core. Astronomers have tried to…
Space travel and exploration was never going to be easy. Failures are sadly all too…
It’s difficult to actually visualise a universe that is changing. Things tend to happen at…
We are all very familiar with the concept of the Earth’s magnetic field. It turns…