M87’s Supermassive Black Hole is Spewing out a Spiralling jet of Material

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Patterns in nature often occur in more than one place. Spirals, symmetry, and chaos all impact natural phenomena, from the shape of a shell to the course of a river. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the most famous and fundamental shapes from biology also appears in astrophysics. Yes, scientists have found a double-helix structure in the magnetic field of M87. And it looks just like a super enlarged DNA strand.


Though M87 is one of the most observed galaxies in the universe, our ability to observe is getting better all the time. Most famous for its place on the Messier catalog, it is even more spectacular in wavelengths other than visual. At 55 million light-years away, it is relatively close cosmically speaking and hosts a supermassive black hole at its center that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun.

M87's Supermassive Black Hole is Spewing out a Spiraling jet of Material

Patterns in nature often occur in more than one place. Spirals, symmetry, and chaos all impact natural phenomena, from the shape of a shell to the course of a river. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the most famous and fundamental shapes from biology also appears in astrophysics...

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