Astronomalies

Author notes

Bad Black Hole Table Manners

Lonnehart

on June 10, 2010

One of the ways astronomers detect black holes. The things shoot out jets of energy from the middle of the accretion discs that they form when they take in material. The magnetic fields generated combined with the black hole's spin rate can concentrate any energy emitted by matter into jets. How is it able to do this? The pressures near the black hole's event horizon (the point of no return) are so great that matter near it will emit a last gasp of energy before being lost forever. That energy follows the twisted magnetic lines generated by the accretion disc being spun up by the black hole, hence why they are shaped into energy jets. Hopefully no one has table manners that are THIS bad…