Surprisingly Strong Magnetic Fields Challenge Black Holes’ Pull

A new study of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies has found magnetic fields play an impressive role in the systems’ dynamics. In fact, in dozens of black holes surveyed, the magnetic field strength matched the force produced by the black holes’ powerful gravitational pull, says a team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany. The findings are published in this week’s issue of Nature.

newscenter.lbl.gov...

hmm.. I thought magnetism is strongly connected to electricity, or is black hole a permanent magnet ?

Tchekhovskoy says the new results mean theorists must re-evaluate their understanding of black-hole behavior. “The magnetic fields are strong enough to dramatically alter how gas falls into black holes and how gas produces outflows that we do observe, much stronger than what has usually been assumed,” he says. “We need to go back and look at our models once again.”

Well, if it the same kind of magnetism (is there another?) then all we gotta do is arrange for some copper coils to be wound around a black hole and we've got ourselves LOTS of free electricity!

a reply to: VoidHawk

Or just make the LHC a giant powerplant seeing as they can create mini black holes.

originally posted by: KrzYma

A new study of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies has found magnetic fields play an impressive role in the systems’ dynamics. In fact, in dozens of black holes surveyed, the magnetic field strength matched the force produced by the black holes’ powerful gravitational pull, says a team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany. The findings are published in this week’s issue of Nature.

newscenter.lbl.gov...

hmm.. I thought magnetism is strongly connected to electricity, or is black hole a permanent magnet ?

Given that a black hole is when all the atoms of the star are scrunched together into basically one super-atom. But the electrons and protons are still there, even if they have been squashed together into neutrons.

So if the black hole is spinning, those little particles are still moving, and would be able to create a magnetic field.
But that suggests that information can escape from a black hole as magnetism. Alternatively, maybe the magnetic field comes from the event horizon combined with the quantum flux of virtual particles appearing and disappearing. If any particles has moved between coming into and going out of existence it would generate a magnetic field.

The earth has a substantial magnetic field due to our spinning core of iron. Perhaps material that falls into a black hole has a significant spin. This would be significant news if true since it has been thought that except for residual radiation that which entered a black hole would not be able to "communicate" outside the black hole.

I think electric universe theorists are being vindicated every week by new discoveries and anomalous events that curtrent models do not explain.....cooool!

originally posted by: bbracken677
The earth has a substantial magnetic field due to our spinning core of iron. Perhaps material that falls into a black hole has a significant spin. This would be significant news if true since it has been thought that except for residual radiation that which entered a black hole would not be able to "communicate" outside the black hole.

The material in the accretion disk outside the black hole has spin. An article in 2010 suggested that the 10% of supermassive black holes that have "jets" may have retrograde spin opposite the accretion disk, accounting for the jets, but I think this is still due to the effect it has on the accretion disk:

Black hole spin may create jets that control galaxy

For two years, Evans has been comparing several dozen galaxies whose black holes host powerful jets (these galaxies are known as radio-loud active galactic nuclei, or AGN) to those galaxies with supermassive black holes that do not eject jets. All black holes — those with and without jets — feature accretion disks, the clumps of dust and gas rotating just outside the event horizon. By examining the light reflected in the accretion disk of an AGN black hole, he concluded that jets may form right outside black holes that have a retrograde spin — or which spin in the opposite direction from their accretion disk. Although Evans and a colleague recently hypothesized that the gravitational effects of black hole spin may have something to do with why some have jets, Evans now has observational results to support the theory in a paper published in the Feb. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The OP article is also talking about these jets that we've known about for a long time, so the jets aren't a new discovery:

The magnetic field strength was confirmed by evidence from jets of gas that shoot away from supermassive black holes.

Since these jets have been shooting out against the gravity of black holes since we first observed them, I'm a little puzzled why the article implies it's any kind of surprise that the magnetic fields are strong. Obviously they have to be some pretty strong fields to accelerate the jets away from the black holes, it shouldn't take a rocket scientists to figure that one out.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I know the accretion disk has spin, but I have never heard anything regarding the possibility or likelihood of the material inside the black hole spinning. I doubt the accretion disk spin would result in the kind of strong magnetic fields being described. I could be wrong, but I don't believe so due to the low density of material in the accretion disk.

Therefore, the only way I know of to account for the field strengths would involve spinning the material inside the hole. Previously it was not believed that anything could leave the black hole, but this would suggest that magnetism can.

originally posted by: bbracken677
Therefore, the only way I know of to account for the field strengths would involve spinning the material inside the hole. Previously it was not believed that anything could leave the black hole, but this would suggest that magnetism can.

Well "spin" can mean different things, it can imply a magnetic moment if charged particles are spinning, but some planets without molten cores can rotate on their axes without creating a significant magnetic field and this can also be called spin, but in the "no hair theorem" for black holes, you could remove the ambiguity of this term by calling it "angular momentum".

In the theory of relativity, there is an effect called "frame dragging" whereby such angular momentum can affect the space around the black hole.

heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Gravity can do more than floor you. According to recent measurements of a star system thought to contain a black hole, it can spin you too. This effect, called frame-dragging, is most prominent near massive, fast spinning objects. Now, a team led by W. Cui (MIT) has used the orbiting Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer to search for it near a system thought to contain a black hole. Cui's team claim that matter in this system gets caught up and spun around the black hole at just the rate expected from frame-dragging. Such discoveries help scientists better understand gravity itself.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Aye...I am no astrophysicist, but I am a geologist. I do know how a planet generates it's magnetic field.

As such, drawing a parallel, I proposed that a similar situation may be occurring within the black hole and if so...would it not be unusual in that normally one thinks of the material inside a black hole not being able to "communicate" with the exterior due to the enormous gravity well exerted?

If it is the spinning (drag) exhibited by the exterior that generated the strong magnetism they are seeing, that also would seem to be an opportunity to further what we know about gravity's place in the "theory of everything", no?

My point being that there is a potential learning here that seems to be way above and beyond the discovery of the magnetic field itself.

Which should support my theory...that a starship that incorporates a black hole propulsion unit, can create one or two magnetic fields surrounding the starship; coming from the micro-mini black hole itself.

This article makes me laugh.

The "gas" in question is not a neutral gas floating around out in space, it is an ionized, electrified, magnetized plasma, like the kind you find inside neon light bulbs.

Neutral gases in space would disperse into clouds and are not effected by magnetic fields. It would be impossible for them to form highly collimated jets that span thousands of light years in length.

These supposed "jets" of matter shooting out of black holes are not actually shooting out of black holes. We know this because we can observe limb brightening along the "jets" far from the origin point of the "jet nozzle". If matter was actually getting shot out of these "jets", we should observe it moving down the length of the "jet". This has not been observed. If matter was actually shooting out of these "jets", it would have to be moving upwards of six times the speed of light to account for what we observe.

An article on this:
www.stsci.edu...

In order to explain away these observations, the charlatan high-priests of science have declared that the "jet" in question isn't actually pointing in the direction it so obviously is. They claim its actually at an odd angle to us, which makes it appear as if the matter is coming out of the jet at six times the speed of light. Of course, this same "odd angle" excuse is employed every time we find another "jet" shooting matter out at faster than light speeds (which they all do).

Einstein's theories did not predict the existence of these jets (or black holes for that matter), the theories around these "jets" were concocted after they were observed. Further, the original theories about these "jets" could only account for matter shooting out of the black hole in ONE direction. We have since discovered bi-polar "jets" that "shoot matter out in both directions."

The matter that is supposedly ejected by these "jets" is an extraordinarily massive amount. Far more than what we would expect to find in an "accretion disk". Don't these "jets" ever run out of matter to blow across the universe? Apparently not. Obviously this is another indication that these are not really "jets" at all.

Scientists have also discovered that the magnetic fields accompanying these jets are helical, like a DNA strand. This just happens to be the same formation that Birkeland currents take when transferring energy between the Sun and the Earth. Electric current carrying plasma in space always braids itself into helical structures.

The "jets" are the result of an plasma pinch. Non-brainwashed engineers have know this for decades. In fact, while Einstein's theories did not predict the existence of these jets, plasma theorists working with electrified plasma did - long before their actual discovery.

Article on this:
electric-cosmos.org...

Good bit of name calling there, really ads credence to the argument.

Also in super luminal motion, the material is not travelling faster than the speed of light, it is simply travelling a good fraction of the speed of light, towards the observer, and effect that scientists have understood for years. The generation of polar jets is not a well understood process.

Secondly LHC cannot make black holes

Jets are most likely electrons and protons accelerated around powerful magnetic field lines, just in the same way a standard particle accelerator works. Magnetic fields around blackholes have been an assumed feature since it is known from polarisation measurements that neutron stars exhibit magnetic properties. You do not see the jets go right back to the source due to a quite simple density issue. We see lobes of jets lit up in radio and x-ray emissions. Interstellar medium is not all that dense, firing a electron beam through this space, you get a very long path length. The stopping power of empty space is somewhat low (by empty im talking 1-5 particles per meter cubed) You can actually get a good distance away before the electrons will interact with anything at all.

Also, depending on what the source is, it could also be possible that the source is something else. Neutrino emission? probably not but just throwing that out there

We simply don't know. More might become known through observing Sgt A*

originally posted by: bbracken677
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Aye...I am no astrophysicist, but I am a geologist. I do know how a planet generates it's magnetic field.

As such, drawing a parallel, I proposed that a similar situation may be occurring within the black hole and if so...would it not be unusual in that normally one thinks of the material inside a black hole not being able to "communicate" with the exterior due to the enormous gravity well exerted?

One of the biggest differences with a black hole as I said earlier is the frame dragging effect. Planets have it too, but Earth's so small it's not that easy to measure and we can say for most practical purposes outside of precise measurements for theory verification, it's probably not significant, especially in relation to the Earth's magnetic field. With black holes, it's much more significant, and there is a model which takes this into account in relation to magnetic fields outside a black hole.

originally posted by: ErosA433
The generation of polar jets is not a well understood process.

I like the fact you used the qualifier "well" to modify "understood" which IMO makes this statement accurate.

Not too long ago I was reading articles saying it was "a mystery" but researchers claim to have made some progress on a popular model for explaining the jets:

The role of the ergosphere in the Blandford-Znajek process

The Blandford-Znajek (BZ) process is one of the leading models to explain the launching of powerful relativistic jets emerging from the supermassive black holes at the center of the galaxies (i.e. Active Galactic Nuclei), and the more moderated ones coming from stellar mass black holes (i.e. microquasars). The main ingredients of this process are a central rotating black hole and an accretion disk, which supports a magnetic field threading the black hole horizon. This magnetic field is twisted by the spinning black hole, producing an outgoing electromagnetic flux which extracts energy and angular momentum from the spacetime.

Although the BZ model was introduced a long time ago (R. D. Blandford and R. L. Znajek. (1977)), it is only recently that many issues and theoretical discoveries concerning this mechanism have been settled. These advances on the understanding of the BZ process have been enabled by numerical simulations. For instance, it has been shown that only the magnetic fields lines threading the ergosphere of the black hole (i.e. the region near the black hole where negative killing energies can exist) rotate due to the frame dragging effect, whether or not they cross the horizon

That was from 2012 and here is another paper from 2013 where researchers say their confidence in the model is growing :

General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Blandford-Znajek Jets and the Membrane Paradigm

First, we quantify the discrepancies between the BZ jet power and our simulations: assuming maximum efficiency and uniform fields on the horizon leads to a ~10% overestimate of jet power, while ignoring the accretion disk leads to a further ~50% overestimate. Simply reducing the standard BZ jet power prediction by 60% gives a good fit to our simulation data. Our second result is to show that the membrane formulation of the BZ model correctly describes the physics underlying simulated jets: torques, dissipation, and electromagnetic fields on the horizon. This provides intuitive yet rigorous pictures for the black hole energy extraction process. Third, we compute the effective resistance of the load region and show that the load and the black hole achieve near perfect impedance matching. Taken together, these results increase our confidence in the BZ model as the correct description of jets observed from astrophysical black holes.

I'm slightly puzzled though because I thought there was previously a problem with models underestimating the jet energy, but that paper actually talks about simulations overestimating the jet energy. I haven't read that last paper yet but it's on my to-do list.