SYDNEY, April 17 (Xinhua) -- New Australian-led research has measured the immense power of jets from black holes, confirming theories of how black holes help shape the structure of the Universe.
Researchers found the power of the jets in Cygnus X-1, a system comprised of the first confirmed black hole and a supergiant star, was equivalent to the power output of 10,000 Suns, said a statement released late Thursday by Australia's Curtin University.
The researchers used an array of linked up telescopes separated by large distances to observe the black hole jets being buffeted by the winds of the star as the black hole moved around its orbit, much like how strong winds on Earth can push around water in a fountain.
By knowing the power of the wind and measuring how much the jets were bent, the researchers could determine the instantaneous power of the jets for the first time, said the study published in Nature Astronomy.
They were able to determine the speed of the black hole's jets, about half the speed of light, or 150,000 km per second, another measurement that has challenged scientists for decades.
Lead author Steve Prabu from the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy at the time of the research, now at the University of Oxford, said the "dancing jets" are repeatedly pushed in different directions by the supergiant star's powerful winds as the system orbits.
"A key finding from this research is that about 10 percent of the energy released as matter falls in towards the black hole is carried away by the jets," confirming a long-standing assumption used in large-scale simulated models of the Universe, Prabu said.
The authors said the findings provide a benchmark for understanding black hole jets across a wide range of masses and distances, with future observatories such as the Square Kilometer Array expected to detect similar jets from black holes in millions of distant galaxies. ■
