A supermassive black hole is spitting a high-energy jet toward Earth

[Judi Lynn]

By Robert Lea published about 5 hours ago
But don't panic — the powerful blazar is located 400 million light-years from Earth.



An illustration shows the blazar Markarian 421 blasting out high-energy jet as seen by NASA's IXPE mission. (Image credit: NASA/Pablo Garcia)

A NASA mission has observed a supermassive black hole pointing its highly energetic jet straight toward Earth. Don't panic just yet, though. As fearsome as this cosmic event  is, it's located at a very safe distance of about 400 million light-years away.

Actively feeding supermassive black holes, including the one at hand, are surrounded by swirling disks of matter called accretion disks which gradually feed them over time. Some of the material they don't swallow is then channeled toward their poles, where it's subsequently blasted out at near-light,  or relativistic,  speed. This creates highly energetic and extremely bright electromagnetic radiation. In some cases, like with NASA's latest muse, that jet is pointed straight at Earth. Those events are known as blazars.

This blazar, designated Markarian 421 and located in the constellation Ursa Major, was observed with NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), which launched in December 2021. IXPE observes a property of magnetic fields called polarization, which refers to the fields' orientation. The polarization of the jet blasted out by Markarian 421 revealed a surprise for astronomers, showing that the part of the jet where particles are being accelerated is also home to a magnetic field with a helical structure.

"Markarian 421 is an old friend for high-energy astronomers," lead researcher behind the discovery and Italian Space Agency astrophysicist, Laura Di Gesu, said in a statement. "We were sure the blazar would be a worthwhile target for IXPE, but its discoveries were beyond our best expectations, successfully demonstrating how X-ray polarimetry enriches our ability to probe the complex magnetic field geometry and particle acceleration in different regions of relativistic jets."

More:
https://www.space.com/supermassive-black-hole-jet-nasa-ixpe-x-ray