Strong magnetic fields affect how supermassive black holes are fed.

Many studies try to shed light on the origin of AGN obscuration. In a recent work, astronomers observed Cygnus-A, a radio galaxy about 750 million light-years from us that hosts a supermassive black hole (SMBH) which generates massive jets. These jets extent to about 150,000 light years. Their analysis reveals the presence of a strong magnetic field that regulates the feeding of the SMBH.

Press release for ATHENA (greek)

   Το παρατηρητήριο ακτίνων-Χ, ATHENA της Ευρωπαϊκής Υπηρεσίας Διαστήματος και η ελληνική συμμετοχή Το διαστημικό τηλεσκόπιο ακτίνων-Χ, ATHENA, μια συνεργασία της ευρωπαϊκής υπηρεσίας διαστήματος, ESA, της NASA και της Iαπωνικής Jaxa θα παρατηρήσει την ακτινοβολία που εκλύει το Σύμπαν στις Read More …

How active supermassive black holes affect the star formation of their host galaxies.

Astronomers from the National Observatory of Athens and the Niels Bohr Institute, used the largest X-ray sample up to date to investigate how active supermassive black holes (SMBH) at the centre of galaxies affect their star formation. They found that, in a similar manner as an oscillator tries to keep the system around the equilibrium point, the SMBH (oscillator) tries to keep the galaxy in the main sequence (equilibrium point)!!

Scientists detect high-energy neutrinos, using the IceCube observatory!

Neutrinos are particle in the size of electrons, but without charge. We know that they have mass, but we haven’t measured it yet. Although they are everywhere (our bodies are hit by about 100 trillion neutrinos every second), neutrinos cannot be detected since they rarely interact with matter. Scientists now managed to spot one of them and trace its origin, a blazar located 3 billion light years away from us!

Finding the missing baryons

The total amount of ordinary matter, called baryonic matter, makes up for about 5% of the total matter of our Universe. The other 95% consists of the exotic dark matter and dark energy. However, even this 5% of baryonic matter is hard to detect! Only 60% of the baryonic matter has been observed! Now scientists, used ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory and found evidence of where these missing baryons are!!