Artist’s impression of an inner accretion flow and a jet from a supermassive black hole when it is actively feeding, for example, from a star that it recent tore apart. Image: ESO/L. Calçada
Signals suggest black hole emits a jet of energy proportional to the stellar material it gobbles up. On Nov. 11, 2014, a global network of telescopes picked up signals from 300 million light years away that were created by a tidal disruption flare – an explosion of electromagnetic energy that occurs when a black hole rips apart a passing star. Since this discovery, astronomers have trained other telescopes on this very rare event to learn more about how black holes devour matter and regulate the growth of galaxies.
Scientists from MIT and Johns Hopkins University have now detected radio signals from t...
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