Astrophysicists find a universal accretion threshold for black hole jets

A study in Nature Astronomy found that jets form around both stellar-mass and supermassive black holes when they consume matter at above roughly 2% of the Eddington limit. Supermassive black holes produce secondary jets years after a bright tidal disruption event at the same accretion rate.

• The critical jet-formation threshold is about 2% of the Eddington limit
• Researchers analyzed 20 tidal disruption events in radio, visible, UV and X-ray bands
• For about 10 events both accretion rate and jet formation could be measured
• Jet formation appears to be scale invariant across black hole masses