Black holes might be the enigmas of the universe, but the contents of their jets aren't so extraordinary, according to a new study. For the first time ever, researchers have been able to locate normal, everyday matter in a black hole jet.
Black hole jets are huge streams of matter shot out from the center of a black hole, traveling at ridiculously high speeds. The contents of these jets have remained a mystery to scientists until recently.
"Although they have been observed for decades, we're still not sure what they are made of, or what powers them," European Southern Observatory astronomer María Díaz Trigo said.
Previous studies have shown electrons to exist in black hole jets, but the mystery lies in the fact that there's no overall charge. Something positive must be lurking in the jets.
Initial observations of a tiny black hole with only a few times the mass of the sun (a lightweight by cosmic standards) revealed nothing out of the ordinary on the radio and X-ray spectrums. A few weeks later, however, there was a shift in the readings, similar to a shift in the pitch of a siren, indicating there is indeed normal matter within these jets.
"Until now it wasn't clear whether the positive charge came from positrons, the antimatter 'opposite' of electrons, or positively charged atoms. Since our results found nickel and iron in these jets, we now know ordinary matter must be providing the positive charge," James Miller Jones from Curtin University said.
The findings, however, don't reveal the full picture. Researchers are still searching for the reason why and how the jets are formed, and what causes them to shoot out at such high speeds.
You can read the full published study detailing the findings in the journal Nature.
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