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How Can Jets of Matter Escape a Black Hole?

-- | June 30, 2015

Question: I don’t understand this:
I read somewhere (and this isnt a quote but its close enough) that

….the gravitational pull of a black hole is so great that nothing can escape from it – not even light ( thats what makes them black).

I also read that its the general scientific concensus that nothing can go faster than light ( or else some law is getting broken or something like that)…..so doesn’t this mean that the stuff in the jets escaping out of black holes is going faster than light can go ,cos light cant get out? — Nigel

Answer: The matter that we observe as jets emanating from a black hole are not actually coming from the black hole itself. The jets are composed of matter which is escaping from the accretion disk which surrounds the black hole. Although the mechanism by which the jets are produced is not completely understood, the process likely involves the acceleration of matter near the poles of the black hole and an interaction with the tangled magnetic field in the region near the poles of the accretion disk. The material in the jets is measured to be travelling at less than the speed of light.

Jeff Mangum

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