Supercomputer Simulations Explain Massively Powerful Black Hole Jet – Confirms

Cupermassive black hole with an X-ray jet. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Further confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is located 55 million light years away from Earth in the Virgo constellation. It is a giant galaxy with 12,000 globular clusters, making the

The theoretical model (theory) and the astronomical observations (observation) of the launching site of the relativistic jet of M87 are a very good match. Credit: Alejandro Cruz-Osorio

The black hole M87* attracts matter that rotates in a disc in ever smaller orbits until it is swallowed by the black hole. The jet is launched from the center of the accretion disc surrounding M87, and theoretical physicists at Goethe University, together with scientists from Europe, USA, and China, have now modeled this region in great detail.

They used highly sophisticated three-dimensional supercomputer simulations that use the staggering amount of a million CPU hours per simulation and had to simultaneously solve the equations of general relativity by Albert Einstein, the equations of electromagnetism by James Maxwell, and the equations of fluid dynamics by Leonhard Euler.

Along the magnetic field lines, the particles are accelerated so efficiently that they form a jet out to scales of 6000 light years in the case of M87. Credit: Alejandro Cruz-Osorio

The result was a model in which the values calculated for the temperatures, the matter densities and the magnetic fields correspond remarkably well with what deduced from the astronomical observations. On this basis, scientists were able to track the complex motion of photons in the curved spacetime of the innermost region of the jet…

Read More: Supercomputer Simulations Explain Massively Powerful Black Hole Jet – Confirms