Supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies may be the most powerful natural particle accelerators in the world, surpassing the capabilities of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This is the conclusion reached by scientists at Johns Hopkins University in a new study published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“The theory about the possibility of such acceleration of particles by black holes has existed for about ten years. But our research attempts to confirm it by finding real cosmic scenarios,” explains co-author Andrew Mummery, a theoretical physicist at Oxford.
This discovery is extremely important, especially against the background of cuts in the scientific sector in the US and the postponement of the construction of the next generation of super-powerful colliders on Earth due to the financial crisis, which could cost tens of billions of dollars and decades of waiting.
How to turn a black hole into a charged particle accelerator
The key point of the discovery is as follows: some supermassive black holes spin at incredible speeds, ejecting powerful jets of plasma. Modeling has shown that at the edge of these “monsters,” turbulent gas flows cause particles to collide chaotically with enormous energy — similar to what happens in Earth’s colliders, but on a much larger scale.
“Particles from these collisions that have sufficient energy and momentum can be released with extremely high energies — higher than we can achieve at the Large Hadron Collider,” Joseph Silk notes.
“But while we invest $30 billion and wait 40 years to build next-generation colliders, black holes can already give us answers about the formation of high-energy elementary particles,” Mummery believes.
Searching for elusive particles
Detecting these high-energy cosmic particles, born near black holes, is a real challenge for modern observatories. Facilities such as IceCube in Antarctica and KM3NeT under the Mediterranean Sea specialize in detecting neutrinos, the most elusive particles. The recent record-breaking detection of a high-energy neutrino by KM3NeT demonstrates the potential of such research.
With a model of particle formation around black holes to work with, scientists now plan to focus on understanding the nature of these particles. Using black holes as space laboratories could be a powerful and cost-effective complement to traditional methods of high-energy physics, paving a new path to unlocking the deepest mysteries of the universe, especially dark matter.
Earlier, we explained how high-energy particles originate in the universe.
According to livescience.com
