Page 39 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

 Streaming out from the center of the elliptical (oval) galaxy M87 in the Virgo cluster, like a cosmic searchlight, is one of nature’s most amazing phenomena, a black hole-powered jet of electrons and other subatomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. The blue of the jet contrasts with the yellow glow from the combined light of billions of unseen stars and the yellow, pointlike globular clusters that make up this galaxy.
Lying at the center of M87 is a supermassive black hole, which has swallowed up a mass equivalent to two billion times the mass of our Sun. The jet originates in the disk of superheated gas swirling around this black hole and is propelled and concentrated by the intense, twisted Magnetic fields trapped within this plasMa. The light that we see (and the radio emission) are produced by electrons twisting along magnetic field lines in
the jet, a process known as synchrotron radiation, which gives the jet its bluish tint.
magnetic field The region of influence of a magnetic body.
milky Way The spiral galaxy in which our star and Solar System are situated.
plasma A collection of charged particles that behaves something like a gas. It can conduct an electric charge and be affected by magnetic fields.
qUasar A rare starlike object of enormous brightness that gives out radio waves, which are thought to be released as material is sucked toward a black hole.
 An artist’s impression of material from a sun being spun off into a black hole.
The blue disk is called the accretion disk. The black hole is at its center. Powerful jets of radiation are given off at right angles to the black hole.
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