The astronomers who once presented the world with a first glimpse of a black hole have now produced another amazing image – but this time of the polarized light swirling around it.

Before this, it was never possible to measure polarization so close to the edge of a black hole. Polarization causes light waves to vibrate in a single plane.

Due to a black hole's dense matter, it creates a gravity field from which even light cannot escape, making black holes challenging to see.  

READ MORE

Eight fruit, vegetables & herbs vs COVID-19

The missing 40 years in virus origin search

The Hungarian doctor still working at 97
 

But the data found by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which took the first image in 2019 of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy M87, took several years to process and analyze.

Co-author of the report on the new black hole image, Monika Moscibrodzka, an assistant professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told AFP: "We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes."

There are two types of black holes. One is a supernova, created when the center of a huge star collapses in on itself. This type can be 20 times bigger than the sun but are tiny in space. 

The other type is referred to as a supermassive black hole, one of which sits at the center of the Milky Way and most galaxies. These types of black holes are at least a million times bigger than the sun. 

Source(s): AFP