Turns out the expression "you can't have it all" also applies to black holes. Astronomers have discovered that although feeding black holes can produce powerful cosmic winds and blast out high-energy jets, they can't do both at the same time.
Instead, this new research suggests that black holes actually act like "cosmic seesaws," switching between these two distinct outflow modes. Not only does this discovery have implications for how black holes grow, but it could also help us better understand how they influence star formation, and thus how they shape their entire home galaxies.
