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What are those Jets Streaming from a Black Hole?

-- | March 17, 2015

Question: On a recent visit to the Very Large Array we saw a radio image of a black hole with two streams of gas and dust being ejected from the area. Is this essentially the EXIT for matter from the black hole? Is this what is taking place at the center of our universe and if that hypothesis were correct, would there most likely be two universes? Thank you in advance. — Andy

Answer: The two streams of matter that are ejected from a galaxy which contains a black hole are due to the energy balancing process for matter which is being swallowed by a black hole. As matter spirals into the center of a galaxy which contains a black hole it loses energy, this lost energy has to go somewhere, and a method for allowing that energy to be released is provided by jets which propagate outward from a black hole along the poles of its axis of rotation. These jets are in fact what we measure at radio wavelengths. This process of energy balance in black holes, though, is unrelated to the structure of our universe.

Jeff Mangum

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