The mystery of how black holes can lose energy to their surroundings has plagued scientists for nearly 50 years. But a group of researchers may have just found the answer to this cosmic puzzle lurking in the gigantic, lightsaber-like jets that shoot out from one of the most monstrous and well-studied black holes in the universe.
It's generally thought that nothing, not even light, can escape a black hole's intense gravitational pull — but this is not entirely true. Since the late 1970s, scientists have theorized that, as a black hole spins at extremely fast speeds, it could lose rotational energy in the form of enormous energy jets that shoot out perpendicularly to a black hole's event horizon, or the boundary beyond which nothing can escape the black hole’s pull. (Information may also escape from black holes via complex gravitational "twisting," but this is a completely different puzzle.)
