Black hole jet appears to boost rate of nova explosions

Enlarge / One of the jets emitted by galaxy M87’s central black hole. (credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

The intense electromagnetic environment near a black hole can accelerate particles to a large fraction of the speed of light and sends the speeding particles along jets that extend from each of the object’s poles. In the case of the supermassive black holes found in the center of galaxies, these jets are truly colossal, blasting material not just out of the galaxy, but possibly out of the galaxy’s entire neighborhood.

But this week, scientists have described how the jets may be doing some strange things inside of a galaxy, as well. A study of the galaxy M87 showed that nova explosions appear to be occurring at an unusual high frequency in the neighborhood of one of the jets from the galaxy’s central black hole. But there’s absolutely no mechanism to explain why this might happen, and there’s no sign that it’s happening at the jet that’s traveling in the opposite direction.

Whether this effect is real, and whether we can come up with an explanation for it, may take some further observations.