Physicists help find gamma rays from black hole

An international collaboration of scientists discovers an outburst of very-high-energy gamma radiation from the giant radio galaxy Messier 87, accompanied by a strong rise of the radio flux measured from the direct vicinity of its supermassive black hole. The findings shed new light on the understanding of gamma rays in black holes.

Pinpointing origin of gamma rays from a supermassive black hole

An international collaboration of 390 scientists reports the discovery of an outburst of very-high-energy gamma radiation from the giant radio galaxy Messier 87 (M 87), accompanied by a strong rise of the radio flux measured from the direct vicinity of its supermassive black hole. The combined results give first experimental evidence that particles are accelerated to extremely high energies in the immediate vicinity of a supermassive black hole and then emit the observed gamma rays. The gamma rays have energies a trillion times higher than the energy of visible light. Washington University in St. Louis physicists helped coordinate this cooperative project, the results of which appear in the July 2 Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.