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Gravitational waves leave traces in quantum systems
by Spektrum der Wissenschaft
These jets have tremendous energy
22.4.2026
Translation: machine translated
Black holes create huge streams of plasma that race through space at almost the speed of light. A study shows just how enormous these jets are.
There is a famous X-ray source in the constellation of Cygnus: the black hole Cygnus X-1. It has historical significance because it is the first black hole to be detected in our galaxy. However, this is not the only reason why astronomers keep focussing on it. Together with a blue giant, Cygnus X-1 forms an X-ray binary star in which enormous forces are at work. Among other things, the black hole produces enormous jets of matter that are strongly influenced by the no less intense particle streams of the nearby stellar giant, as a team led by Steve Prabu from the University of Oxford has determined with the help of an Earth-spanning X-ray telescope.
The black hole is 21 times more massive than our sun; its stellar companion even has 41 solar masses - albeit with a significantly larger diameter. The two orbit each other every 5.6 days, while the black hole attracts material from the supergiant, which the latter blows away in the form of a stellar wind. A large part of this material disappears forever behind the event horizon, but the magnetic fields that form in the rotating disc of matter around the black hole also lead to the formation of jets: high-energy plasma streams that shoot into space at extremely high speeds. They transport energy from the immediate vicinity of the black hole in Cygnus X-1 to a distance of 16 light years. Over the last 20,000 years, a large bubble of hot gas has formed in the relative vicinity of the X-ray binary star system.
The combination of various radio telescopes around the globe enabled the working group to create high-resolution images of the jets, whose data they were then able to analyse. The blue giant loses around 100 million times as much mass via its stellar wind as our sun loses via its solar wind. At the same time, the blue giant's wind is three times as fast. This makes it so strong that it can deflect the jets emitted by the black hole and blow them away from the star: In other words, they change direction. Through modelling, Pradu and co were able to measure the power of the jets for the first time and found that it is equivalent to that of 10,000 solar luminosities.
Black holes generally influence their surroundings via their jets. According to the researchers, there has so far been no direct method of measuring the energy flowing into these plasma streams at any given time. Their study could help to better understand the energy balance of black holes in general.
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Header image: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) / Curtin University (detail)
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