Africa-Press – Rwanda. Researchers were able to determine how particles in plasma jets emitted by blazars “accelerated to such high energies.” A team of astronomers led by Ioannis Liodakis from the University of Turku has managed to gain new insight into the nature of blazars – active galactic nuclei that emit jets of magnetized plasma pointing nearly towards the observer.
Using the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) – a space observatory that is a joint venture between NASA and the Italian Space Agency – Liodakis and his colleagues took a closer look at a blazar called Markarian 501 located over 300 million light years away.
With the help of the IXPE, researchers managed to take a closer look at how particles in these plasma jets, which are “known to be ultimately powered by a supermassive black hole”, become “accelerated to such high energies.”
As one media outlet explained, originally there were two models explaining how a blazar accelerated particles: through shock waves, as Liodakis’ team suggests, or through interactions with the magnetic field of the supermassive black hole powering such a jet.
While it was impossible to determine which model is correct, it appears that observations made via IXPE finally allowed scientists to obtain an answer to this question.
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