Recently a microblazar has been confirmed in our own galaxy, Milky Way. Scientists have been investing this cosmic mystery for nearly 30 years. The study reveals that the object named IRAS 18293-0941 sits about 1200 light years away from Earth and one of its powerful jets points straight towards the Earth. It sounds danger but there’s no need to worry. Because that object is located very far from us. At that distance its jets poses no danger to us. The best part of this discovery is that scientists found the evidence of an object for which they had only predicted about for years but not able to prove it.
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What Exactly Is a Microblazar?
To understand about microblazar, first you need to know about a regular blazar.
A blazar is not an object like a planet or star. In, correct way we can say it a huge active system called Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) and located at the center of the distant galaxy. This system is powered by a supermassive black hole. You can imagine it as one of the most powerful and brightest system in the universe. And its main part is the supermassive black hole.
These black holes contain millions or billions times more mass than our sun. They have extremely powerful gravity, so it pulls massive amount of gas and dust from its surrounding. The matter gets trapped inside and spins around the black hole. Due to friction matter becomes extremely hot and it started glowing. Most of the swirling matter eventually falls into the black hole, but some of it escapes before reaching the center. Powerful magnetic fields help push this material away, sending it into space in two powerful beams of light and radiation called jets. When one of these jets points almost directly toward Earth, astronomers call it a blazar.
Black hole only fires jets in two opposite directions at once. Blazar is entirely depends on the direction of the jets. If one of the jets point towards the Earth, then only the system is called blazar. If these jets have different direction instead of pointing straight at us, then the same system gets different name like quasar, a radio galaxy, or a microquasar, depending on its other specific features.
A Microblazar also works exactly same but on a much smaller scale. Instead of supermassive black hole, microblazar is powered by a stellar mass black hole. These black holes only contain roughly 10 times more mass than our sun. It is present here, inside our own Milky Way. Scientists always suspected that microblazars could exists somewhere in our galaxy, but nobody had ever managed to confirm one. That’s why this microblazar discovery is such a big deal. It is the first solid proof that this type of object truly exists close to us.
How Astronomers Finally Found It?
The story behind this microblazar actually goes back decades. The object, IRAS 18293-0941 was first recorded in 1983, but at that time astronomers did not have any clue about it. So it remained an unsolved mystery. Astronomers noticed some clues that led them to this particular star system. The first was that a huge star in the system had a strange light pattern coming from it. It had a periodic color shift which means that something unusual was going on. It suggested that this star has a companion black hole which orbits it every 11.4 days. The star system is also oriented in such a way that it’s one of jets is almost directed towards the earth. This explains why this is called a microblazar.
An international team led by astronomer Josep Martí of the University of Jaén in Spain used observations from several telescopes. They used the Calar Alto Astronomical Observatory in Spain, the European VLBI Network (a network of radio telescopes spread across different countries) and the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa. By combining data from all these telescopes, the team finally confirmed that the system matched what scientists had predicted a microblazar would look like.
What the Jet Is Actually Doing?
Inside this microblazar, the black hole is pulling material away from its companion star. As the stolen matter moves closer to the black hole, some of it falls inwards, while some is launched into space through two narrow jets traveling at speeds close to the speed of light. One jet points almost directly toward Earth, while the other shoots in the opposite direction, deeper into space.
As the outward-facing jet crashes into the gas between stars, it has created a huge bubble about 100 light-years across. The powerful collision releases enormous amounts of energy and produces high-energy gamma rays, which are the most energetic radiations in the universe.
By studying this bubble, scientists get a chance to know how a black hole’s jet affects its surrounding. Such details are much harder to observe in distant blazars. This nearby microblazar is valuable for studying about jet’s behavior.
Is Earth in Any Danger From This Microblazar?
After studying this article, surly you want to ask this question, and it is absolutely fair. So the answer is “no”. Hearing, a black hole’s jet is pointed towards the Earth is scary. But this microblazar is about 12000 light years away from us. Over such a large distance, its radiation spreads out and weakens, leaving no meaningful threat to our planet. Our Earth is constantly hit by cosmic radiation and scientists from many sources present in our galaxy. And scientists study this radiation to know about powerful events in universe. But this newly discovered microblazar poses no threat to our planet, because of vast distance between it and us.
What Comes Next?
After confirming this microblazar, scientists are eager to learn more about its working. They plan to study about its evolution over time, interaction of jets with their surrounding andwhether similar microblazars might be hiding elsewhere in our galaxy. After thirty years of searching, astronomers finally have their first confirmed microblazar, and it may be just the beginning of a much bigger search for more microblazars across the Milky Way.