Jet Astronomy

Tracing the fire from black holes

Jets of high-speed particles riddle the celestial canvas. They are generated by dramatically different objects: nascent stars still in the process of coalescing, massive stars that have collapsed to form the smallest of black holes, and supermassive black holes weighing as much as a billion suns. Astronomers have long dreamed of having one theory that could explain the origin and evolution of all these jets.