NASA, Pablo Garcia

This is an illustration depicting a powerful jet erupting from the orange accretion disk surrounding a black hole. High-energy phenomena like this occur throughout the universe. How do black holes produce X-rays? Recently, data collected by the NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite brought scientists a step closer to answering this age-old question. X-rays cannot escape from inside a black hole, but they can be generated in the energetic environment around it. In particular, they are created by particle jets extending outward. Observations of X-rays reaching from near the supermassive black hole located at the center of galaxy BL Lac revealed that these X-rays exhibit almost no special polarization. This suggests that the X-rays were likely produced primarily by electrons with energies greater than those of protons.