{"id":6443,"date":"2022-03-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=6443"},"modified":"2022-03-23T10:16:28","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T09:16:28","slug":"new-perspective-of-black-hole-confirms-30-year-old-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/2022\/03\/10\/new-perspective-of-black-hole-confirms-30-year-old-prediction\/","title":{"rendered":"New perspective of black hole confirms 30-year-old prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Observations by Europe\u2019s Very Large Telescope could help us to shed light on the history of the Milky Way<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Since they were first spotted in the 1950s, active galactic nuclei, or AGNs, have puzzled astronomers. In the night sky, an AGN is a bright, compact region at the centre of a galaxy that gives off much more light than would be expected to be produced by stars.<\/p>\n\n

The source of this luminosity is thought to be supermassive black holes, or more precisely the matter that swirls around their edges at close to the speed of light before getting sucked into the black hole\u2019s event horizon.<\/p>\n\n

Although it\u2019s thought that supermassive black holes are the source of all AGNs, it\u2019s not clear why some are less energetic (bright) than others. But now astronomers have their answer, thanks to some observations of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy not so far away.<\/p>\n\n

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The dot shows the likely position of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy Messier 77, while the lines show the locations of the inner and outer dust ring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The Unified Model of AGNs, which was first theorised 30 years ago, states that although some AGNs appear to emit radio bursts, others visible light, and others still X-rays, they all consist of supermassive black holes surrounded by a ring of cosmic dust that emit electromagnetic radiation not originating from stars. The difference in appearance between the AGNs is simply caused by the orientation at which we can see the black hole through the ring from Earth \u2013 some are more obscured by the dust than others.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Close-up observations taken by the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO\u2019s VLTI), located in Chile\u2019s Atacama Desert, have now provided evidence to support this model.<\/p>\n\n

The team made the discovery by studying Messier 77, a spiral galaxy situated 47 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cetus, using the VLTI\u2019s Multi AperTure mid-Infrared SpectroScopic Experiment (MATISSE).<\/p>\n\n