Black hole jet formation follows universal rule across all masses

Astronomers have discovered that black hole jet formation appears to follow a universal rule regardless of the object's mass. Research published in Nature Astronomy indicates that both supermassive black holes and much smaller stellar-mass black holes launch radio jets when their feeding rate drops to approximately 2% of the Eddington limit.

To observe these changes in real-time, researchers utilized tidal disruption events, where a supermassive black hole shreds a star. While changes in active galaxies typically take millions of years to observe, these events allow scientists to monitor feeding and outflow phases over just a few years. By analyzing ten well-observed events, the international team confirmed that the physics governing jet production remains consistent across a mass range spanning roughly seven orders of magnitude.