From the maw of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, two enormous jets stream thousands of light-years into space. Scientists still don’t fully understand the physics behind the jets, which are made of a mix of electrically charged particles, or plasma (SN: 3/24/21). But they are “really, really amazing,” says astrophysicist Alejandro Cruz-Osorio of Goethe University Frankfurt. So he and colleagues created a computer simulation of M87’s black hole and the swirling gas that surrounds it in an accretion disk. The aim: Figure out how this black hole — already famous for posing for a picture in 2019 (SN: 4/10/19) — became such a
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