An Incredible New Image Of A Black Hole Spewing Material At 99.5% Of Light Speed, From The Telescope That Took The First Ever Image Of A Black Hole
One year ago, the Event Horizon Telescope released the first-ever image of a black hole. You've seen it — the flaming donut in the heavens:
Now, the EHT is back with another fantastic revelation from the study that produced the black hole image — a visual of a jet of material being shot out by a supermassive black hole 5 billion light years away from Earth:
The target, 3C 279, contains a black hole about one billion times more massive than our Sun. Twin fire-hose-like jets of plasma erupt from the black hole and disk system at velocities close to the speed of light: a consequence of the enormous forces unleashed as matter descends into the black hole's immense gravity.
While the observed black hole and quasar are absolutely gigantic, at 5 billion light-years from the Earth, spotting them in such detail is still an incredible achievement, "equivalent of someone on Earth identifying an orange on the Moon."
