Scientists have found evidence that black holes of vastly different sizes may launch powerful jets according to the same universal rule. Supermassive black holes can produce jets soon after tearing apart a star, then fire up again hundreds or thousands of days later when their feeding rate drops to about 2% of the Eddington limit. That same threshold is known to trigger jets from much smaller black holes in the Milky Way.
Black holes of every size follow the same surprising rule. The researchers found that black holes can launch jets at the same critical stage of their feeding cycle, regardless of their size. That includes "stellar-mass" black holes about ten times the mass of our sun as well as supermassive black holes that are millions of times heavier.
The work was carried out by Andrew Mummery, Martin A. And Helen Chooljian Member (2025-30) in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Adelle Goodwin, a Forrest Research Foundation Fellow at Curtin University’s International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research in Western Australia. Watching Black Holes Tear Stars Apart Published in Nature Astronomy under the title "An universal critical accretion rate for black hole jet formation," the study brings together years of observations across multiple wavelengths.
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