Black Holes Blow or Shoot: It All Depends on Rotation Direction ✛

Original: "Winds Versus Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei"

· David Garofalo, Chandra B. Singh, Atticus Magerko, Marco Botello, Sophia Soto, Max North

arXiv:2607.22418v1 · 2026-07-24 · CC BY 4.0 · 1 min

Discovery: For a black hole to spew an ultra-fast wind rather than a narrow jet, the infalling gas cloud must rotate in the same direction as the hole.

From the centers of some galaxies, broad streams of gas erupt at nearly 60% the speed of light. These are not narrow jets but winds. Some black holes 'blow', others 'shoot'. The reason is rotation direction.

It's like gears meshing. A black hole, described by Roy Kerr, spins itself, and around it spins the Accretion disk (the infalling spiral). If they spin in the same direction, the disk approaches closely. Then energy is released violently, accelerating the wind. If they spin against each other, the disk stops farther out, less energy, but the magnetic field has time to twist and fire a jet.

The fastest wind discovered, in quasar SDSS J1029+2623, travels from Earth to the Moon in two seconds.

That's why some galaxies show only winds, others only jets, and sometimes both simultaneously if the disk changed rotation direction after a galaxy merger.

Whole graph →

The fastest known wind — from the quasar SDSS J1029+2623 — blows at a speed of 0,58c, covering the distance from the Earth to the Moon in two seconds.

r_{\text{ISCO}} = r_g \left[3 + Z_2 \mp \sqrt{(3-Z_1)(3+Z_1+2Z_2)}\right], \quad Z_1 = 1 + (1-a^2)^{1/3}[(1+a)^{1/3}+(1-a)^{1/3}], \quad Z_2 = \sqrt{3a^2+Z_1^2}

يحدد المدار الأقرب إلى الثقب الأسود حيث يمكن للقرص أن يدور باستقرار. تؤخذ إشارة الناقص عندما يدور القرص في نفس اتجاه الثقب الأسود؛ والموجب عندما يدور في الاتجاه المعاكس.

Scientists

Stephen Hawking Jacob Bekenstein John Archibald Wheeler Roger Penrose Margaret Burbidge Maarten Schmidt

Concepts

accretion disk wind black hole wind relativistic jets microquasar galactic winds blazar changing agn activity radio loud quasar seyfert galaxy active galaxy black hole recoil jet protoplanetary disk winds mass ratio quasar obscured agn x ray binary active galactic nucleus red dots spin rate torus

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Black Holes Blow or Shoot: It All Depends on Rotation Direction ✛