Many black holes are surrounded by magnetic fields. As it spins, the black hole drags curved spacetime along with it, like a machine's flywheel, and sets the cosmic factory in motion. When the magnetic field is tilted relative to the axis of rotation, the factory’s conveyor belt works especially efficiently — an electric field of incredible power is generated.
Dirac once suggested, and now it's confirmed: vacuum is not empty but teems with hidden pairs. When switched on, this field 'stamps' electrons and positrons out of the void, like parts from a sheet of metal. Here, the field’s tilt acts like a tool’s approach angle: the more precise the tilt, the greater the yield.
The newborn particles collide, forming a superheated plasma. This workshop heats to white-hot incandescence and produces a gamma-ray burst, sometimes linked to a supernova explosion — for a moment it outshines an entire galaxy. Scientists have discovered that in the first instants, the main driver of the process is not thermal chaos (entropy), but magnetic energy. Understanding this will help more accurately gauge the power of cosmic explosions.
To 'squeeze' particles from the void, the cosmic factory requires an electric field a million billion times more powerful than lightning.