Black holes of every size launch jets the same way
Goodwin and Mummery studied stars ripped apart by supermassive black holes, events called tidal disruptions. They found these giant black holes launch outflows at the same critical accretion rate as small, stellar-mass black holes, about 2% of the Eddington limit. The pattern is the same. According to the study, published in Nature Astronomy, this points to one universal mechanism for jet formation regardless of a black hole's size. It also explains why some disrupted stars produce delayed outflows and others show them right away.
Astronomers gain a single explanation for how black holes of every size launch jets, simplifying decades of separate theories.
Source: A universal critical accretion rate for black hole jet formation - Nature Astronomy (doi.org).
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