After decades of effort, scientists have finally discovered the secret mechanism that powers the brightest light shows in the universe, which are emitted by absurdly energetic beams that shoot out of explosive galaxies known as blazars, reports a new study. 

The breakthrough was made possible by a new space mission that can see, for the first time, the mind-boggling physics that fuels these astrophysical jets, which are made of ultrafast particles and can shine with the brightness of 100 billion Suns. 

Though our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is in a sleepy phase at the moment, many other “active” galaxies are bursting at the seams with energetic matter that is juiced up by the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centers. Intense interactions between the huge black holes and their gassy surroundings can cause radiant jets to erupt from these galaxies at close to the speed of light; some jets extend for more than a million light years into deep space. 

Blazars are active galaxies with jets that point directly at Earth. These objects are located many millions or billions of light years away, so they don’t pose any risk to our planet, though their jets are so bright that they can be spotted even across those vast distances. Thousands of blazars have been observed by astronomers, but nobody has ever been able to explain the precise mechanisms that made them so overwhelmingly luminous—until now.

Scientists led by Ioannis Liodakis, a Gruber Fellow at the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with the European Southern Observatory at the University of Turku, were able to solve this mystery at last, thanks to the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), a joint mission between NASA and the Italian Space Agency that launched into orbit in December 2021. 

Liodakis and his colleagues used IXPE to examine an extremely bright blazar called Markarian 501, which is located more than 300 million light years from Earth. Because IXPE is the first mission that can capture a pattern called polarization in X-ray light, the researchers were able to show that the particles in these jets are supercharged by shock fronts, resolving a longstanding “unanswered question” about the dynamics of these brilliant objects, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature.

“We’ve known about these sources from the 60s,” Liodakis said in an email to Motherboard, referring to blazar jets. “They are among the brightest objects in X-rays and for years we did not know how the X-rays are made. We had a few theories, but the radio and optical data we could get are not able to tell us much.” 

“That is because those come far from the acceleration site, whereas X-rays come right from the heart of the accelerator,” he continued. “They really let us look at the acceleration region and physical conditions there, making them the ideal tool to address our questions.” 

Put another way, each band of the light spectrum tells a different story about the nature of these jets, and scientists have been missing the key X-ray chapter. In particular, researchers have sought to capture the polarization of X-rays in the jets, which is essentially a pattern embedded in the configuration of light waves that contains information about how and where the light was produced. 

While scientists have long been able to study the polarization of blazar jets in many different bands of the light spectrum, only IXPE can resolve these patterns in the kind of high-energy X-ray light that illuminates the initial process that sends the jet particles careening into deep space at unthinkable energies.Liodakis said that the mission has been on the wishlist of astronomers for decades, and that its observations have helped to open “a new window to the Universe” that has enabled scientists to “be able to do the observations and after all those years to directly test our models.”

Indeed, IXPE’s view of Markarian 501, which was captured in March 2022, suggest that the particles in a jet are accelerated when they slam into slower-moving material in the galaxy, which produces a shock wave that spreads through the jet and boosts the particles to incredibly high energy levels. Particles that travel in this wave produce highly polarized X-ray light; as they move beyond it, their emission becomes less polarized.

These results confirm models that predicted the central role of shock waves in powering these  cosmic particle accelerators, which are natural laboratories for studying the behavior of light and matter at extremely high energies. To that end, Liodakis and his colleagues hope that IXPE, and similar instruments, will continue to expose the secrets of blazars and their pyrotechnic jets, including Markarian 501.  

“Our observations were done when Markarian 501 was in sort of an average activity state,” Liodakis said. “Those sources are always active, but there are periods of time that they go into these outbursts that can make them more than 100 times brighter. We are not sure our findings apply in those states.” 

“We have planned more observations that will hopefully take place soon, and we will be able to figure out what is happening in the jets during these outbursts,” he concluded.

America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), the pseudo-medical group that rocketed to pandemic infamy by spreading bad information about COVID, advocating for discredited treatments, fearmongering about vaccines, and attempting to influence state legislation, is suing one of its founders in federal court, months after her release from prison. 

AFLDS filed suit on November 4 against Dr. Simone Gold, accusing her of misappropriating AFLDS funds to buy a $3.6 million home, rent another property, purchase three luxury vehicles, and fund a housekeeper, personal security detail, and thousands of dollars a month in other, unspecified personal expenses. The suit also accuses Gold of tortious interference, claiming she’s seeking to “to take back control of AFLDS and restore herself into a leadership role with the organization.” In September, Gold finished serving almost 60 days in prison on a trespassing charge after she entered the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. 

The suit was filed by AFLDS and top official Joseph Gilbert, a former boxer and current attorney who, according to the lawsuit, took over as the group’s chair, CEO, and “Director of Strategy” in February 2022. It offers an unusually frank and detailed look at how much money AFLDS has made pushing discredited COVID cures and bad science, and how much is at stake for those currently fighting for control of the organization.  

According to the suit, Gilbert took over running AFLD’s day-to-day operations while Gold served her prison sentence. By that time, the suit alleges, the organization was already “aware of Gold’s uses of AFLDS funds,” and had hired a forensic auditor and had its outside accounting firm “begin a financial audit in order to determine what next steps should be taken with regard to Gold’s use of AFLDS funds for her personal use.”

The suit alleges that upon her release from prison, Gold “wanted to take back control of AFLDS and restore herself into a leadership role with the organization,” though she had, the group claims, no official role other than as a consultant. It alleges that Gold emailed the AFLDS board in October accusing Gilbert of unspecified “wrongdoing,” and “demanded that the Board take certain steps to essentially remove Mr. Gilbert from the Board and investigate her allegations.”

The suit claims that the board retained legal counsel to investigate Gold’s allegations, but that as it did so, “Gold began threatening the Board, AFLDS’ counsel, and employees that she would interfere with AFLDS donors, to persuade them not to make donations to AFLDS if her demands were not met.” The suit also alleges that Gold continued representing AFLDS in “speaking engagements” and “falsely told donors that Mr. Gilbert had engaged in financial improprieties, ethical violations, and corruption.” And it claims that Gold identified herself as AFLDS’s chairman and president when she was no longer either, describing a remarkably funny press-release based coup attempt: “On November 3, 2022, without the authorization of the Board, Gold purportedly on behalf of AFLDS, and identifying herself as the ‘Chairman and President of AFLDS,’ released a press release that reported she had ‘resumed’ her role as Chairman and President of AFLDS and repeated Gold’s allegations against Mr. Gilbert that she announced to the AFLDS employees,” the suit claims. (Gold shared that press release on Twitter.) And on November 6, 2022, it alleges, Gold, “without the authorization of the Board, directed AFLDS employees to seize control of AFLDS’ electronic mail, website domain name systems (‘DNS’), and other electronic databases” and lock some employees out of those systems. 

The suit also makes numerous allegations about what Gold did with the organization’s apparently copious funds, alleging that in November 2021, she purchased a $3.6 million home in Naples, Florida with AFLDS funds, “without authorization or approval by the Board of Directors.” Soon after, it alleges, she signed a residential lease on another Naples property, and a fellow self-proclaimed medical freedom activist and his wife lived “rent free.” 

The suit also accuses Gold of using AFLDS funds to buy “a Mercedes Benz Sprinter van, a Hyundai Genesis, and a GMC Denali” for her personal use, as well as paying a personal security officer $12,000 per month and a housekeeper $5,600, “and otherwise spending money for personal items on AFLDS credit cards at a rate of nearly $50,000 per month.” The suit also alleges the home was used by GoldCare employees; GoldCare is a telemedicine service founded by Gold that charges $1,000 per year for individual memberships, and—of course—does not accept insurance. 

The suit also accuses Gold of fraud, conversion, breaches of fiduciary duty, and defamation, and alleges damages in excess of $75,000. AFLDS and Gilbert are asking for a jury trial. 

News of the suit was first shared on Twitter by Abby Mahler, a photographer and lupus and disability justice advocate who often talks about medical disinformation online. Mahler has frequently covered the ways that patients with various autoimmune diseases suffered as a result of not being able to access hydroxychloroquine. The drug became much, much harder to find after groups like AFLDS began flogging it as unproven COVID treatment. Mahler told Motherboard that they’ve heard countless stories from other people with autoimmune conditions, what they called “devastating months- to years-long impacts of missing meds.”

Since the start of the pandemic, Gold has promoted false information about COVID and COVID vaccines, which she called “an experimental, biological agent deceptively named a vaccine” in the speech she delivered on the Capitol floor during the attempted insurrection. Besides advocating for hydroxychloroquine, she also downplayed the effectiveness of basic public health interventions like masks, writing on her personal blog in 2020, “The scientific usefulness of a mask has been so aggressively overstated.” 

Previously, Gold and AFLDS made some strides in solidifying their relationships with conservative lawmakers. Last year, as VICE News  previously reported, lawmakers in at least five states introduced proposed “Vaccine Bill of Rights” bills with language that closely mirrored model legislation written by AFLDS. Upon her release from prison, Gold was presented with an American flag recently flown over the U.S. Capitol by Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert. 

Gold has continued primarily identifying herself as AFLDS’ founder online; she was also recently a featured speaker on the Reawaken America tour, a traveling hodgepodge of far-right, QAnon and COVID-denying personalities.  Medical records show Gold is still licensed to practice medicine in both California and Florida. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Motherboard.