A critical accretion rate governs jet formation in all black holes

Researchers have discovered that supermassive black holes and their smaller stellar mass counterparts launch outflows governed by the same critical accretion rate. The work centers on tidal disruption events, where a star is torn apart by a black hole, providing a unique window to observe accretion flows evolving over years, a timescale impossible to study in typical active galactic nuclei. The findings demonstrate that supermassive black holes exhibit the same accretion-outflow coupling as stellar mass black holes, establishing that the critical low accretion rate threshold for jet formation is scale invariant. This research naturally explains observed properties and detection rates for outflows in tidal disruption events, previously unsolved problems. Tidal disruption events offer a unique window into supermassive black hole accretion, revealing outflow launches during periods of super-Eddington accretion and again at a critical accretion rate identical to that observed in stellar mass black holes. This finding resolves a long-standing question regarding whether accretion-outflow coupling remains consistent across black holes of vastly different sizes,…