World-wide Campaign Sheds New Light on Nature's "LHC"

In a manner somewhat like the formation of an alliance to defeat Darth Vader's Death Star, more than a decade ago astronomers formed the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope consortium to understand Nature's Death Ray Gun (a.k.a. blazars). And contrary to its at-death's-door sounding name, the GASP has proved crucial to unraveling the secrets of how [...]

Recent observations of blazar jets require researchers to look deeper into whether current theories about jet formation and motion require refinement. This simulation, courtesy of Jonathan McKinney (KIPAC), shows a black hole pulling in nearby matter (yellow) and spraying energy back out into the universe in a jet (blue and red) that is held together by magnetic field lines (green). In a manner somewhat like the formation of an alliance to defeat Darth Vader's Death Star, more than a decade ago astronomers formed the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope consortium to understand Nature's Death Ray Gun (a.k.a. blazars). And contrary to its at-death's-door sounding name, the GASP has proved crucial to unraveling the secrets of how Nature's "LHC" works."As the universe's biggest accelerators, blazar jets are important to understand," said Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) Research Fellow Masaaki Hayashida, corresponding author on ...