When astronomers released the first-ever image of a black hole in 2019, the world caught a glimpse of the monster at the center of the galaxy M87.
But more than a century earlier, in 1918, astronomer Heber Curtis had already noticed something strange about this galaxy: a thin jet of light and matter shooting from its heart.
That jet, now known to come from the supermassive black hole M87*, stretches for 5,000 light-years into space and races outward at nearly the speed of light.
How such jets form has puzzled scientists for decades—until now.
Researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt have developed a new supercomputer code that shows how black holes can power such enormous streams of energy and particles.
Their work, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reveals that these jets don’t just rely on one well-known process, but on two.
At the center of M87 sits a black hole six and a half billion times the mass of our Sun. Like a spinning top, it rotates quickly, and this rotation is the engine behind the jet.
Until now, the leading explanation was the Blandford–Znajek mechanism, in which magnetic fields around the black hole extract its rotational energy and convert it into a jet.
But the Frankfurt team’s new code shows that another process, called magnetic reconnection, plays a key role too.
Magnetic reconnection happens when magnetic field lines snap and then reconnect, unleashing huge bursts of energy.
This energy heats particles, creates plasma outbursts, and accelerates matter to near-light speeds. In the black hole’s equatorial region, the team’s simulations revealed chains of plasma “bubbles,” known as plasmoids, forming and shooting outward at incredible speeds.
These events also generate particles with unusual negative energy, which help fuel the black hole’s powerful jets.
The researchers achieved this insight using the Frankfurt Particle-in-Cell code for black hole spacetimes, or FPIC.
The code simulates how countless charged particles interact with magnetic fields while being influenced by Einstein’s general relativity.
Running these models required millions of hours on some of Europe’s fastest supercomputers, including Frankfurt’s “Goethe” and Stuttgart’s “Hawk.”
According to team leader Professor Luciano Rezzolla, the results show that energy extraction from black holes is more complex than previously thought. Both the Blandford–Znajek mechanism and magnetic reconnection work together to explain how black holes drive such luminous and powerful jets.
“This helps us understand why active galaxies shine so brightly and how particles get accelerated to nearly the speed of light,” Rezzolla said. He added that the ability to describe these extreme processes with both computer simulations and mathematical rigor is not only scientifically valuable but also deeply exciting.
In short, black holes are not just cosmic vacuum cleaners—they are also extraordinary power plants, hurling matter and energy across the universe with unimaginable force.
Source: KSR.
