Scientists may have found evidence that vampire black holes feeding on their victim stars — so-called microquasars — are the cosmic particle accelerators responsible for mysterious high-energy cosmic rays we see bombarding Earth.
These stellar mass black holes exist in binary systems with a supergiant star from which they greedily strip material. Some of that stellar matter then gets channeled toward the poles of the black hole, where it is subsequently blasted out in high-speed relativistic jets. Microquasars get their name because they are similar to quasars, which are powered by giant supermassive black holes feeding on surrounding material, but not quite as extreme.
