4 ms·
I mean, that is what the article appears to say, no? Magnetic forces carried by the plasma surrounding the black hole interacting with frame-dragged spacetime.
by gbrown 6y ago
I mean, that is what the article appears to say, no? Magnetic forces carried by the plasma surrounding the black hole interacting with frame-dragged spacetime.
- DiabloD3 6y agoThe actual paper doesn't say that, Phys.org coverage is a bit hit and miss sometimes, trying to dumb it down enough for the common reader (but not nearly as much as the news media does). The paper is mostly about the actual record of the observations. Based on the description of the authors, it seems they're witnessing a huge z-pinch being formed out of a (most likely multi-layered) toroidal plasma field. Conceptually, this phenomenon and experimental double layer Hail effect thrusters are pretty similar, and exploit the same area of plasma physics. The jet doesn't switch on until you pump enough energy into it, similar to how plasma goes from glow mode to arc mode relatively quickly, but forms a self-reinforcing helical beam perpendicular to the plasmoid donut. None of this necessarily requires gravity, even to stay cohesive at this immense scale.