Beast's eye in space: Object spewing particles at Earth was a mystery. A photo has revealed it is...

Scientists have created a masterful piece of an object shooting cosmic jets in space that has long been a mystery. Despite being located billions of light-years away, this entity can be seen releasing extremely bright high–energy gamma rays and cosmic neutrinos. In fact, it is one of the brightest sources of these particles ever seen in space. Yet, it appears to be moving slowly. This defied the theory that only the fastest cosmic jets could cause such exceptional brightness. To decode what was going on, astronomers decided to peer into the object releasing the jets. The PKS 1424+240 is a blazar that has dazzled scientists on Earth for years. Blazars are galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centres that actively accrete matter. Such galaxies emit strong radiation. This one has been seen shooting jets right at us. Using the Very Long Baseline Array, a system of 10 radio telescopes, scientists have created an image of this blazar, and it is literally a beast's eye in space.

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Eye of Sauron in the universe

The findings about the blazar were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Yuri Kovalev, from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said that once they were done constructing the extremely high-resolution photo of the blazar, it left them stunned. "We have never seen anything quite like it—a near–perfect toroidal magnetic field with a jet, pointing straight at us," he said. It is almost like an eye in the sky, or in this case, the universe. It is almost like the Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings movies. They also solved the mystery of the extreme brightness from the blazar captured from Earth. The researchers said that the jet is aligned in a way that it is pointing exactly in the direction of Earth. Co–author Jack Livingston said that this "causes a boost in brightness by a factor of 30 or more."

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As for the reason behind the slow movement of the jets, it is nothing but an optical illusion. It is simply because of "projection effects", Livingston said. After reconstructing the scary, monstrous eye, scientists also got the chance to peer directly into the blazar. This offered them a peek into the structure of the jet's magnetic field, which turned out to be helical, a spiral, or toroidal, like a doughnut. Researchers said this shape explains why particles are being pushed out of it at such extreme energy.