GBO Science Newsletter – #AAS242 Edition

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GBO @ #AAS242

Find out everything there is to know about GBO at AAS 242! See a list of GBO and GBT related presentations, our latest publications, a digital swag bag, and more.

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Children of GBO Staff Among Recipients of 2023 AUI Scholarship 

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Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF
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GBT Will Receive Simulated Message from Extraterrestrial Intelligence

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A Sign in Space imagines how Earth might respond to a signal from aliens and invites the public to help decode an ET message.

Image credit Dave Green
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Peculiar Fast Radio Burst Provides Clues to Mysterious Origin

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The Green Bank Telescope was able to observe the directional changes of waves from FRB20190520B as viewed through the lens of a massive star’s atmosphere. Image credit: NSF/GBO/P.Vosteen.

Residing in the heart of a dwarf galaxy four billion light years away is a mysterious cosmological object producing bursts of energy that only last a few milliseconds. New research about this Fast Radio Burst (FRB) has revealed a rarely seen astronomical environment around its source, where magnetic fields twist, turn, and undulate over time. This is the first detection of a magnetic field reversal observed from an FRB, and the first time this behavior has been observed in another galaxy.

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NSF Telescopes Image M87’s Supermassive Black Hole and Massive Jet Together for the First Time

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Observations also revealed that the supermassive black hole’s ring is bigger than imagined

Scientists observing the compact radio core of M87 have discovered new details about the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. In this artist’s conception, the black hole’s massive jet is seen rising up from the center of the black hole. The jet was born from energy created by the magnetic fields surrounding the spinning core of the black hole and winds rising up from the black hole’s accretion disk. The observations represent the first time that the jet and the black hole have been imaged together, giving scientists new context into the compact radio core of M87. These observations also revealed that the black hole’s ring is 50% larger than previously believed. Credit: S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Scientists studying the supermassive black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy have revealed the origins of the monster’s powerful jet and imaged the jet and its source together for the first time. What’s more, the observations have revealed that the black hole’s ring is much larger than scientists previously believed. The observations published today in Nature.

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