The galaxy M87, located in the Virgo constellation, provided the first-ever photo of a black hole in 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. An international research team has now observed a teraelectronvolt gamma-ray flare seven orders of magnitude — tens of millions of times — larger than the event horizon, or surface of the black hole itself. A flare of this intensity — which has not been observed in over a decade — can offer crucial insights into how particles, such as electrons and positrons, are accelerated in the extreme environments near black holes.
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