Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
"Death Star" Galaxy Black Hole Fires at Neighboring Galaxy
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The blazar BL Lacertae, a supermassive black hole surrounded by a bright disk and jets oriented toward Earth, provided scientists with a unique opportunity to answer a longstanding question: How are X-rays generated in extreme environments like this?
NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) collaborated with radio and optical telescopes to find answers. The results (preprint available here), to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that interactions between fast-moving electrons and particles of light, called photons, must lead to this X-ray emission.
This artist’s concept depicts the central region of the blazar BL Lacertae, a supermassive black hole surrounded by a bright disk and a jet oriented toward Earth. The galaxy’s central black hole is surrounded by swirls of orange in various shades representing the accretion disk of material falling toward the black hole. While black holes are known for pulling in material, this accretion process can result in the ejection of jets of electrons at nearly the speed of light. The jet of matter is represented by the cone of light that starts at the center of the black hole and widens out as it reaches the bottom of the image. It is streaked with lines of white, pink and purple which represent helix-shaped magnetic fields. We can observe these jets in many wavelengths of light including radio, optical, and X-ray. NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) recently collaborated with radio and optical telescopes to observe this jet and determine how the X-rays are generated in these types of celestial environments.NASA/Pablo Garcia Scientists had two competing possible explanations for the X-rays, one involving protons and one involving electrons. Each of these mechanisms would have a different signature in the polarization of X-ray light. Polarization is a property of light that describes the average direction of the electromagnetic waves that make up light.
If the X-rays in a black hole’s jets are highly polarized, that would mean that the X-rays are produced by protons gyrating in the magnetic field of the jet or protons interacting with jet’s photons. If the X-rays have a lower polarization degree, it would suggest that electron-photons interactions lead to X-ray production.
IXPE, which launched Dec. 9, 2021, is the only satellite flying today that can make such a polarization measurement.
“This was one of the biggest mysteries about supermassive black hole jets” said Iván Agudo, lead author of the study and astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía – CSIC in Spain. “And IXPE, with the help of a number of supporting ground-based telescopes, finally provided us with the tools to solve it.”
Astronomers found that electrons must be the culprits through a process called Compton Scattering. Compton scattering (or the Compton effect) happens when a photon loses or gains energy after interacting with a charged particle, usually an electron. Within jets from supermassive black holes, electrons move near the speed of light. IXPE helped scientists learn that, in the case of a blazar jet, the electrons have enough energy to scatter photons of infrared light up to X-ray wavelengths.
BL Lacertae (BL Lac for short) is one of the first blazars ever discovered, originally thought to be a variable star in the Lacerta constellation. IXPE observed BL Lac at the end of November 2023 for seven days along with several ground-based telescopes measuring optical and radio polarization at the same time. While IXPE observed BL Lac in the past, this observation was special. Coincidentally, during the X-ray polarization observations, the optical polarization of BL Lac reached a high number: 47.5%.
“This was not only the most polarized BL Lac has been in the past 30 years, this is the most polarized any blazar has ever been observed!” said Ioannis Liodakis, one of the primary authors of the study and astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics – FORTH in Greece.
IXPE found the X-rays were far less polarized than the optical light. The team was not able to measure a strong polarization signal and determined that the X-rays cannot be more polarized than 7.6%. This proved that electrons interacting with photons, via the Compton effect, must explain the X-rays.
The fact that optical polarization was so much higher than in the X-rays can only be explained by Compton scattering.
Steven Ehlert
Project Scientist for IXPE at Marshall Space Flight Center
“The fact that optical polarization was so much higher than in the X-rays can only be explained by Compton scattering”, said Steven Ehlert, project scientist for IXPE and astronomer at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
“IXPE has managed to solve another black hole mystery” said Enrico Costa, astrophysicist in Rome at the Istituto di Astrofísica e Planetologia Spaziali of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofísica. Costa is one of the scientists who conceived this experiment and proposed it to NASA 10 years ago, under the leadership of Martin Weisskopf, IXPE’s first principal investigator. “IXPE’s polarized X-ray vision has solved several long lasting mysteries, and this is one of the most important. In some other cases, IXPE results have challenged consolidated opinions and opened new enigmas, but this is how science works and, for sure, IXPE is doing very good science.”
What’s next for the blazar research?
“One thing we’ll want to do is try to find as many of these as possible,” Ehlert said. “Blazars change quite a bit with time and are full of surprises.”
More about IXPE
IXPE, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, Inc., headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe
Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters
elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov
202-358-0845
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
256.544.0034
Share
Details
Last Updated May 06, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayContactElizabeth R. Landauelizabeth.r.landau@nasa.govLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
Marshall Space Flight Center IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) Marshall Astrophysics Explore More
4 min read NASA’s Chandra Diagnoses Cause of Fracture in Galactic “Bone”
Article 5 days ago 4 min read NASA Marshall Fires Up Hybrid Rocket Motor to Prep for Moon Landings
Article 2 weeks ago 6 min read NASA’s Chandra Releases New 3D Models of Cosmic Objects
Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
IXPE
About Marshall Science
Marshall Space Flight Center
Black Holes
Black Holes Black holes are among the most mysterious cosmic objects, much studied but not fully understood. These objects aren’t…
View the full article
-
By USH
Several days ago, a massive blackout swept across large parts of Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France. Millions were left without power as the interconnected European energy grid experienced a rare and abrupt failure. While authorities quickly pointed to a "rare atmospheric phenomenon" as the cause, not everyone is convinced.
Here are some explanations of authorities as well as controversial theories:
According to REN, Portugal’s national electricity grid operator, the blackout was triggered by a fault originating in Spain’s power infrastructure. The disruption, they claim, was linked to "induced atmospheric variation", a term referring to extreme temperature differences that led to anomalous oscillations in high-voltage transmission lines. These oscillations reportedly caused synchronization failures between regional grid systems, ultimately sparking a chain reaction of failures across the European network.
What makes the situation even more intriguing is that just days before the blackout, Spain hit a historic energy milestone. On April 16, for the first time, the country’s electricity demand was met entirely by renewable energy sources - solar, wind, and hydro, during a weekday. It raises questions whether the outage was caused by a technical failure of this new renewable energy system.
While this achievement is noteworthy, it also exposes the fragility of a grid increasingly reliant on variable energy sources, especially solar, which can fluctuate dramatically with weather and atmospheric conditions.
Despite official explanations, some experts and observers remain skeptical. There were no solar flares or geomagnetic storms in the days leading up to the blackout, and solar activity had been relatively calm. Critics argue that while atmospheric disturbances may have played a role, they are not sufficient to explain such a widespread, synchronized failure.
Despite the fact that the blackout this time was probably not caused by solar flares or geomagnetic storms it has been proven that Earth’s magnetic shield is rapidly weakening, leaving us increasingly vulnerable to powerful solar storms. The magnetic north pole is accelerating toward Siberia, and the South Atlantic Anomaly continues to expand, ominous signs that a looming plasma event could bring consequences far beyond just technological disruption.
This has led to speculation that the blackout could have been intentional, possibly even a test run for handling future crises or threats to infrastructure.
Among the more controversial theories is the suggestion that this event might have involved the use of a graphite bomb, a non-lethal weapon designed to disable power grids. These devices disperse ultra-fine carbon filaments into high-voltage power lines, causing short circuits by creating conductive paths between lines. Such an attack would appear as a grid malfunction but could be devastating in scale.
Another controversial theory is that the outage has been caused by weather manipulation systems such as HAARP or the Ice Cube Neutrino observatory, constructed at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.
Could this have been a covert drill or a demonstration of vulnerability? Some point to global forums, such as the World Government Summit, where figures like Klaus Schwab have warned about Black Swan: An unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences.
Whether the blackout was triggered by a rare natural event, a technical failure, or something more deliberate, it seems only a matter of time before we face a true Black Swan event. View the full article
-
By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
https://youtu.be/63uNNcCpxHI How are we made of star stuff?
Well, the important thing to understand about this question is that it’s not an analogy, it’s literally true.
The elements in our bodies, the elements that make up our bones, the trees we see outside, the other planets in the solar system, other stars in the galaxy. These were all part of stars that existed well before our Sun and Earth and solar system were even formed.
The universe existed for billions of years before we did. And all of these elements that you see on the periodic table, you see carbon and oxygen and silicon and iron, the common elements throughout the universe, were all put there by previous generations of stars that either blew off winds like the Sun blows off a solar wind, or exploded in supernova explosions and thrust their elements throughout the universe.
These are the same things that we can trace with modern telescopes, like the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These are all elements that we can map out in the universe with these observatories and trace back to the same things that form us and the elemental abundances that we see in stars now are the same things that we see in the Earth’s crust, we see in asteroids. And so we know that these are the same elements that were once part of these stars.
So the question of, “How are we made of star stuff?”, in the words of Carl Sagan, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]
Full Episode List
Full YouTube Playlist
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 28, 2025 Related Terms
General Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Chandra X-Ray Observatory Hubble Space Telescope James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Origin & Evolution of the Universe Science Mission Directorate The Solar System The Universe Explore More
3 min read NASA Moon Observing Instrument to Get Another Shot at Lunar Ops
Article 16 mins ago 5 min read NASA 3D Wind Measuring Laser Aims to Improve Forecasts from Air, Space
Article 1 hour ago 1 min read Earth Science Showcase – Kids Art Collection
Article 3 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
-
By NASA
4 Min Read NASA Marshall Fires Up Hybrid Rocket Motor to Prep for Moon Landings
NASA’s Artemis campaign will use human landing systems, provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, to safely transport crew to and from the surface of the Moon, in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars. As the landers touch down and lift off from the Moon, rocket exhaust plumes will affect the top layer of lunar “soil,” called regolith, on the Moon. When the lander’s engines ignite to decelerate prior to touchdown, they could create craters and instability in the area under the lander and send regolith particles flying at high speeds in various directions.
To better understand the physics behind the interaction of exhaust from the commercial human landing systems and the Moon’s surface, engineers and scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently test-fired a 14-inch hybrid rocket motor more than 30 times. The 3D-printed hybrid rocket motor, developed at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, ignites both solid fuel and a stream of gaseous oxygen to create a powerful stream of rocket exhaust.
“Artemis builds on what we learned from the Apollo missions to the Moon. NASA still has more to learn more about how the regolith and surface will be affected when a spacecraft much larger than the Apollo lunar excursion module lands, whether it’s on the Moon for Artemis or Mars for future missions,” said Manish Mehta, Human Landing System Plume & Aero Environments discipline lead engineer. “Firing a hybrid rocket motor into a simulated lunar regolith field in a vacuum chamber hasn’t been achieved in decades. NASA will be able to take the data from the test and scale it up to correspond to flight conditions to help us better understand the physics, and anchor our data models, and ultimately make landing on the Moon safer for Artemis astronauts.”
Fast Facts
Over billions of years, asteroid and micrometeoroid impacts have ground up the surface of the Moon into fragments ranging from huge boulders to powder, called regolith. Regolith can be made of different minerals based on its location on the Moon. The varying mineral compositions mean regolith in certain locations could be denser and better able to support structures like landers. Of the 30 test fires performed in NASA Marshall’s Component Development Area, 28 were conducted under vacuum conditions and two were conducted under ambient pressure. The testing at Marshall ensures the motor will reliably ignite during plume-surface interaction testing in the 60-ft. vacuum sphere at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, later this year.
Once the testing at NASA Marshall is complete, the motor will be shipped to NASA Langley. Test teams at NASA Langley will fire the hybrid motor again but this time into simulated lunar regolith, called Black Point-1, in the 60-foot vacuum sphere. Firing the motor from various heights, engineers will measure the size and shape of craters the rocket exhaust creates as well as the speed and direction the simulated lunar regolith particles travel when the rocket motor exhaust hits them.
“We’re bringing back the capability to characterize the effects of rocket engines interacting with the lunar surface through ground testing in a large vacuum chamber — last done in this facility for the Apollo and Viking programs. The landers going to the Moon through Artemis are much larger and more powerful, so we need new data to understand the complex physics of landing and ascent,” said Ashley Korzun, principal investigator for the plume-surface interaction tests at NASA Langley. “We’ll use the hybrid motor in the second phase of testing to capture data with conditions closely simulating those from a real rocket engine. Our research will reduce risk to the crew, lander, payloads, and surface assets.”
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Credit: NASA Through the Artemis campaign, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars – for the benefit of all.
For more information about Artemis, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
News Media Contact
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.