Beyond The Shadow Of A Black Hole

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – The first black hole images stunned the world in 2019, with headlines announcing evidence of a glowing doughnut-shaped object from the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87 —55 million light years from Earth. Supercomputer simulations are now helping scientists sharpen their understanding about the environment beyond a black hole’s ‘shadow,’ material just outside its event horizon.

Supercomputer simulations are helping scientists sharpen their understanding about the environment beyond a black hole’s ‘shadow,’ material just outside its event horizon. Snapshot image from radiative simulations of M87 black hole. Credit: DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf200

“Ever since we made that first black hole image, there’s been a lot of work trying to understand the environment just around the black hole,” said Andrew Chael, an associate research scholar at Princeton University and a fellow of the Princeton Gravity Initiative.

Chael is part of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT), which connects telescopes from around the world to form a mega-telescope roughly the size of Earth. The EHT uses a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, a type of astronomical interferometry used in radio astronomy that compares telescope signals to stitch together images that resolve the M87 black hole.

Shown in the black hole image is light from hot electrons that spiral around surrounding magnetic field lines and produce synchrotron radiation.

“We want to understand the nature of the particles of this plasma that the black hole is eating, and the details of the magnetic fields commingled with the plasma that in M87 launches huge, luminous jets of subatomic particles,” Chael said.

Like a beacon, the jets signal the possible presence of a black hole in center of the M87 galaxy as it spews particles thousands of light years from the source.

Using Supercomputers to Simulate Black Hole Plasma, Magnetism, and Gravity

Across the globe, scientists are harnessing the power of supercomputers to unravel one of the universe’s most extreme environments: the space around black holes.

Chael’s research group is among those using advanced simulations to model the dynamic interplay between high-energy plasma, powerful magnetic fields, and the overwhelming pull of gravity near these cosmic giants. These forces do not act in isolation—they interact in complex, feedback-driven ways that allow black holes to consume surrounding matter, launch jets across vast distances, and emit the glowing radiation captured by the Event Horizon Telescope.

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Written by Eddie Gonzales  Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer