© 2025 WRVO Public Media
NPR News for Central New York
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Why black holes are more than 'cosmic vacuum cleaners'

In 1918, astronomer Heber Curtis identified a black hole jet that seemed to shoot out of M87, a galaxy about 50 million light years away from Earth.
NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
In 1918, astronomer Heber Curtis identified a black hole jet that seemed to shoot out of M87, a galaxy about 50 million light years away from Earth.

Black holes are notorious for gobbling up, well, everything.

"They are often seen as sort of cosmic vacuum cleaners, just sucking in all the material gas and stars that stray close," says Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale University.

They're icons of destruction, ruthless voids, ambivalent abysses from which nothing can return.

At least, according to pop culture. According to science, there's a whole world of nuance.

"What is counterintuitive is that we do see very powerful jets of material that are actually expelled from them as well," Natarajan says.

These jets that shoot out from supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, are sometimes millions of light years long. They carry huge amounts of energy and radiation.

"One should think of them perhaps in the same way as one thinks about nuclear power," says Roger Blandford, an astrophysicist and professor at Stanford University. "Of course, they can be famously destructive, but also it can be a source of power in a nuclear reactor."

Blandford and his colleague Roman Znajek are known for coming up with an explanation for how these jets get their energy, known as the Blandford-Znajek process. Telescope images from the last few years have supported their hypothesis.

If you liked this episode you might want to hear more about supermassive black holes, what it might be like to fall into a black hole or lessons we can learn from black holes.

Got other cosmic curiosities? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

Today's episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Regina G. Barber
Regina G. Barber is Short Wave's Scientist in Residence. She contributes original reporting on STEM and guest hosts the show.
Rachel Carlson
Rachel Carlson (she/her) is a production assistant at Short Wave, NPR's science podcast. She gets to do a bit of everything: researching, sourcing, writing, fact-checking and cutting episodes.
Rebecca Ramirez (she/her) is the founding producer of NPR's daily science podcast, Short Wave. It's a meditation in how to be a Swiss Army Knife, in that it involves a little of everything — background research, finding and booking sources, interviewing guests, writing, cutting the tape, editing, scoring ... you get the idea.