When Black Hole Jets Create Natural Particle Accelerators

Cosmic rays are energetic particles moving at high speeds. Because it takes significant energy to create them, they often serve as cosmic messengers, revealing clues about the extreme environments that produce them — such as supermassive black holes. On Earth, scientists use accelerators to generate and study particles moving at high speeds, but nature needs no such apparatus. Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a possible mechanism behind nature’s own particle accelerators: When the magnetic fields in the material around a supermassive black hole get tangled, they can generate conditions that send cosmic rays skipping off through the universe.