Burp Up The Bubble

NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA Artist’s concept depicts a tidal disruption event, which occurs when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole. The easiest way to find a black hole is to look for its jets. These trails of ionized gas stream away from a black hole at near light speed. They form when a black hole consumes matter and forms an accretion disk of hot plasma. Inactive black holes don’t produce jets, making them harder to discover. But just how active does a black hole need to be for jets to form? This is the focus of a new study in Nature Astrophysics.1 Stellar-mass black holes are usually active because of a companion star. If a black hole closely orbits a stellar companion, it can strip the outer layers of the star and consume the material. The more material a black hole can capture, the faster it can consume matter and the more active it is. At least up to a point. The faster a black hole consumes matter, the more heat and light it produces. If a black hole consumes…