Many objects in space generate jets of matter that burst out of their poles at tremendous speeds. They can be of very different nature, but scientists say that in all cases the same mechanism is responsible for it — spiral magnetic fields.
Space jets
An international team of scientists recently published the results of their study on jets. This is the name given to jets of particles and radiation that have enormous, but still slightly slower than light, speeds and are very highly collimated. The latter term means that all particle trajectories are parallel.
In general, relativistic jets are an astronomical phenomenon that is observed in very many objects — from newborn stars to quasars in galaxies billions of light years away from us. These are all very different objects, and the forces that act on them are of a different nature.
However, the authors of the new study claim that the mechanism of jet emission is the same in all cases. They reached this conclusion based on a study of the jet bursting out of the protostar HH 80-81. The results of the study are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Protostellar jet research
HH 80-81 jet research has been going on for a number of years. And also the 2010 and 2021 studies indicated that there were some interesting magnetic fields associated with the jet there. However, it itself has predominantly thermal nature, so it was extremely difficult to determine the three-dimensional structure of these fields by the behavior of particles.
However, this time the scientists were able to use the upgraded NSF VLA radio telescope and obtain data on the radial rotation speed of the material in the jet. Because of this, they were able to make corrections for the Faraday effect, which describes the behavior of light when passing through a magnetized plasma.
Eventually, scientists determined that spiral magnetic fields existed directly around the jet and that they were responsible for the acceleration of the matter in it. This is the first such study of a relativistic jet that has touched so deeply on its physics.
However, the fact that magnetic fields are associated with the jet itself, not with the object that generated it, and not with the surrounding environment, has prompted scientists to think that not only the jets of newborn stars, but in general all such objects may have the same acceleration mechanism.
That is, it doesn’t matter what the object actually is. Relativistic jets will be blasted out due to spiral magnetic fields that are linked directly to their material rather than to a quasar or star.
According to phys.org
