Using ALMA, astronomers and astrophysicists can study polarized radio wave emissions from Sgr A*, which they can use to investigate the magnetic field surrounding the supermassive black hole. "The new data are extremely helpful for building a theoretical interpretation of these events." "Now we find strong evidence for a magnetic origin of these flares and our observations give us a clue about the geometry of the process," Monika Mościbrodzka, an EHT collaboration team member and an astrophysicist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said in the same statement. The team suggests that the hot spots detected at infrared wavelengths could be the result of gas bubbles that become visible at longer wavelengths of light (like those ALMA sees) when they cool down. "Here we see for the first time a very strong indication that orbiting hot spots are also present in radio observations." "What is really new and interesting is that such flares were so far only clearly present in X-ray and infrared observations of Sagittarius A*," Wielgus said. Scientists have previously linked flares like this to magnetic interactions in hot gas bubbles that orbit close to Sgr A* at rapid speeds. The discovery comes because ALMA collected some of its data after a burst, or flare, of X-rays from the heart of the Milky Way detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Wielgus and his team found within that data clues to the nature of Sgr A* and its surroundings, buried in the measurements made by only ALMA. Earlier this year, the same collaboration unveiled the first image of Sgr A*.īut ALMA recorded additional data at the same time as the EHT observations of Sgr A*. This led to the first-ever image of a black hole, released in 2019, which depicted the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Along with other telescopes in the EHT, ALMA started observing supermassive black holes in 2017.
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