Episode 69: The Rule That Does Not Care About Size

A black hole does not care how big it is when it decides to burp. That is the finding, stripped to one sentence. Whether the hole is about ten times the mass of the Sun or millions of times heavier, it appears to launch its powerful jets at the same point in its feeding cycle. The critical mark is about two percent of a limit called the Eddington limit, the point where the outward push of radiation balances the inward pull of gravity.

The work was led by Dr. Adelle Goodwin at Curtin University’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, with Dr. Andrew Mummery at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. It is published in Nature Astronomy under the title A universal critical accretion rate for black hole jet formation. They looked at stars being torn apart by supermassive black holes, events called tidal disruption events, and found a pattern that matches what we already knew from much smaller holes in our own galaxy.

This is Strange Bites episode69. Tonight the Story is about a rule that seems to ignore size, and about why some black holes go quiet and then light up hundreds or thousands of days later.

SOURCES

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1144361

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1144447

https://scitechdaily.com/astronomers-discover-a-universal-trigger-for-black-hole-jets/

Paper: Goodwin, Mummery, and colleagues. A universal critical accretion rate for black hole jet formation. Nature Astronomy.