A tidal disruption event (TDE) sample matches one accretion threshold for launching jets
Scienmag said Adelle Goodwin and Andrew Mummery used stellar disruptions around giant black holes to compare how disks feed outflows, and reported the same critical accretion rate from stellar-mass to supermassive scales. The Nature Astronomy paper dated 17 September is titled A universal critical accretion rate for black hole jet formation.
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One threshold, two mass scales
Scienmag, in a 21 September note, said Adelle Goodwin at International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Curtin University, and Andrew Mummery at the Institute for Advanced Study tracked how disks feed outflows using stellar disruptions around giant black holes. Stellar-mass systems flip state in weeks; a typical active galactic nucleus (AGN) takes thousands of years. These disruptions move on a years-long clock. The authors report outflows at one critical accretion rate across those masses and call the process scale-invariant.[1]
What the paper is called
The Nature Astronomy article dated 17 September is titled A universal critical accretion rate for black hole jet formation, DOI 10.1038/s41550-026-02951-1. Scienmag pointed to that DOI. The paper itself is the retained companion, not a second newsroom rewrite. Its date is 17 September, older than this edition's news window, and it is not treated as a fresh news item.[1]
What scale-invariance means here
The claim is that outflows switch on at the same critical accretion rate whatever the black hole's mass. A stellar-mass system changes state over weeks, a supermassive nucleus over thousands of years, and a tidal disruption over years. If three different timescales mark the same threshold, the threshold belongs to the physics of the disk rather than to the mass. That is why the authors call the process scale-invariant.[1]
