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Astronomers Witness the Awesome Power of a Black Hole’s “Dancing Jets”

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Astronomers have long been fascinated by the powerful jets emanating from black holes. These jets result from gas and dust being pulled into the black hole’s gravity well, forming an accretion disk that is accelerated to velocities approaching the speed of light. While most of this material slowly accretes onto the black hole’s event horizon, some will spiral away from the poles, creating powerful jets that can be seen many light-years away.

In a recent research study, a team of astrophysicists led by Curtin University used 18 years of high-resolution radio imaging data to study the jets in the Cygnus X-1 system – the first confirmed binary system consisting of a black hole and supergiant star. The images allowed them to measure the immense power of these jets, equivalent to the output of 10,000 Suns. These findings confirm previously held theories on how black holes shape the structure of the Universe.

The team was led by Steve Prabu and James Miller-Jones, an Adjunct Associate Lecturer and a Professor with the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University. They were joined by researchers from the Institut de Ciències del Cosmos Universitat de Barcelona (ICCUB), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Lethbridge, and the Institute of Space Science. Their paper, “A jet bent by a stellar wind in the black hole X-ray binary Cygnus X-1,” is published in the journal *Nature Astronomy*.

*Artist’s impression of the Cygnus X-1 binary system, showing how the wind of the supergiant star bends the black hole’s jets away from the star as the objects move in their orbit around one another. Credit: ICRAR*

To understand the power of the black hole jets, the team needed to observe how they are perturbed by the solar wind coming from the massive star it co-orbits with. To do this, the team combined radio data from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the European VLBI Network (EVN), two networks of telescopes with stations across the world. These combined observations created a more complete picture of the system, a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI).

This allowed the team to measure how much the black hole’s jets are buffeted as it orbits its stellar companion, thereby yielding (for the first time) estimates of the jets’ power. In another first, their calculations also yielded estimates of the speed of the black hole jets, which were roughly 150,000 km/s (93,200 mps), or half the speed of light. These measurements allow scientists to understand how much of the energy released around black holes is likely deposited into the surrounding space, ultimately revealing how black holes shape their environments.

“A key finding from this research is that about 10 percent of the energy released as matter falls in towards the black hole is carried away by the jets,” Dr. Prabu said. “This is what scientists usually assume in large-scale simulated models of the Universe, but it has been hard to confirm by observation until now.” Prof. Miller-Jones added that previous methods could only measure the average jet power over thousands to millions of years, preventing accurate comparisons with X-ray emissions caused by infalling matter:

And because our theories suggest that the physics around black holes is very similar, we can now use this measurement to anchor our understanding of jets, whether they are from black holes 10 or 10 million times the mass of the Sun. With radio telescope projects such as the Square Kilometer Array Observatory currently under construction in Western Australia and South Africa, we expect to detect jets from black holes in millions of distant galaxies, and the anchor point provided by this new measurement will help calibrate their overall power output. Black hole jets provide an important source of feedback to the surrounding environment and are critical to understanding the evolution of galaxies.

Further Reading: Curtin University, Nature Astronomy

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How to watch the Los Angeles mayoral debate

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Three of the leading candidates for Los Angeles mayor — incumbent Karen Bass, Councilmember Nithya Raman and reality television personality Spencer Pratt — will share the stage for a debate Wednesday evening.

The hour-long forum, broadcast on NBC4 and Telemundo 52, will be held at the Skirball Cultural Center in Brentwood starting at 5 p.m.

The debate will also air online at nbcla.com and telemundo52.com and be available via streaming channels on platforms like Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Samsung TV Plus.

Voters have already been mailed their ballots for the June 2 primary election, which can be returned by mail or at designated drop box locations. In-person voting is already open at the county’s Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office in Norwalk, and will expand to county Vote Centers starting May 23.

Wednesday’s debate will be moderated by anchor Colleen Williams and political reporter Conan Nolan of KNBC-TV, and anchor Enrique Chiabra of Telemundo 52. The debate is held in partnership with Loyola Marymount University and the Skirball Cultural Center.

A gubernatorial debate will follow at 7 p.m.

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A Look Inside the Case That Enshrined Political Power for Billionaires

After Watergate, Congress tried to curtail the role of money in politics. But a pivotal Supreme Court case nipped it in the bud. Years later, new details are emerging on how wealthy Americans were conferred with a “right to spend” on elections.

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Subaru Telescope Reveals New Data on the Interior Composition of 3I/ATLAS

On Jan. 7th, 2026, the Subaru Telescope joined many of the world’s observatories and space telescopes in observing the 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object (ISO) detected in our Solar System. This interstellar comet had just completed its closest approach to the Sun, which produced more intense outgassing. By observing the light from 3I/ATLAS’ coma, astronomers were able to examine the chemical composition of the comet’s interior and produce estimates of the ratio of carbon dioxide to water.

Prior observations largely provided insight into the composition of its outer layers, which have been subject to billions of years of cosmic irradiation. As the Subaru team reported in a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal, their results showed that the ratio of carbon dioxide to water was much lower than that inferred from previous observations by space telescopes, providing clues about the ISO’s structure and suggesting that the chemistry of the coma is evolving.

The research was led by Yoshiharu Shinnaka and a team from the Koyama Space Science Institute at Kyoto Sangyo University. They were joined by researchers from the Division of Science at Kyoto Sangyo University, the University of Occupational and Environmental Health, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), and Kyoto-based optical instrument manufacturer Photocross Co.

Comet 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1) has garnered much attention since it was first detected on June 1st, 2025, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). As the third ISO detected it as it passed through the Solar System, scientists eagerly monitored this comet as it approached our Sun and made its closest approach. Unlike 1I/’Oumuamua, scientists had confirmed the detection of 3I/ATLAS four months prior to it reaching perihelion.

And unlike 2I/Borisov, 3I/ATLAS was much larger and brighter, allowing for greater scientific returns. For their analysis, the team applied analytical methods and expertise accumulated from decades of observing comets in the Solar System. Based on this, the team estimated the CO²-to-water ratio in the coma, which provided hints about the nucleus’s structure and composition. The ratio they detected was lower than that observed by the many space telescopes during the same period.

Since asteroids and comets are essentially material left over from the formation of planetary systems, their interior compositions provide information about the conditions in these systems at the time. By studying these objects, scientists can learn what conditions are like elsewhere in the galaxy without having to send missions there. As Shinnaka commented in a NOAJ press release, the methods he and his colleagues employed will enable even greater scientific returns when future telescopes observe future ISOs:

With the full-scale operation of survey telescopes in the coming years, many more interstellar objects are expected to be discovered. By applying the observational and analytical techniques we have developed through studies of Solar System comets to interstellar objects, we can now directly compare comets hailing from both inside and outside the Solar System and explore differences in their composition and evolution.

Through studies of such objects, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of how planetesimals and planets formed in a wide variety of stellar systems, including our own Solar System.

Further Reading: Subaru Telescope