Astrophysical Jets Everywhere! WHY?

Here is a list of astrophysical systems that display high-energy jets on the stellar scale.

Gamma Ray Burst sources; short and long GRBs

Pulsars/Neutron stars

Brown Dwarf stars

Haro-Herbig sources

Black Holes

Young Stellar Objects

Protostars

Supernova

And here is a list of the galactic scale objects that produce enormous high-energy jets.

Quasars

BL Lac Objects

Radio Galaxies

Active Galaxy Nuclei

Seyfert Galaxies

Elliptical Galaxies

Spiral Galaxies

It is natural to wonder why jet phenomena are so ubiquitous throughout the cosmos. Here is one speculative idea for what is going on with jets. It might provide a more unified understanding of these enigmatic phenomena.

One notices that in at least 11 of the 15 types of system listed above, there are ultracompact objects (like black holes or neutron stars) at their cores. In the case of a black hole, it is conventionally thought that adding a modest amount of mass would be unlikely to cause a major burp. Perhaps a weak gravitational wave metaphorically encoding: “yummm, gimme more”.

But what if ultracompact astrophysical objects have semi-discrete allowed masses, as is the case for nucleons and atomic scale nuclei? Adding more mass to a black hole that was already in a stable state with an allowed mass would put it into an unstable excited state, and it would tend to lose energy in order to return to a lower energy allowed state. Energy could be lost most easily by increasing the rotation rate and/or ejection of excess mass in high-energy particle jets. We see these energy loss mechanisms manifested in pulsars.

If nature’s fundamental objects on the stellar and galactic scales have discrete sets of allowed masses, as is the case for fundamental atomic scale objects, this might help to explain the ubiquitous mystery of astrophysical jets.

Further reading: https://medium.com/@rloldershaw/natures-startling-clue-conformal-symmetry-edited-version-f34e8e627092