In one panel it described relativistic jets as particles that are launched from the black hole digesting stars and other matter. In another panel it described the jets as originating from the swirling matter just outside the event horizon. If a black hole has such intense gravity, how can any particle escape to at anytime, unless the
particle is of an as of yet unknown type?
Yes, confusing! The writers here are using the term "black hole" to describe the entire system ... both inside and outside of the event horizon. The particles in the jets never went inside the event horizon. They started as part of the swirling mass outside the event horizon, were pulled towards the center of the black hole, but missed going in and were whipped around and launched back into space.
The reason the particles are squished into 'jets' (and not just flung out in random directions) is basically due to the rotation of the black hole. Exactly how the jets form and how they work is still a subject of intense research. A couple of cool pages:
Wikipedia:
Astrophysical jet
Bad Astronomy:
A Distant Black Hole Powers A Colossal Galactic Fountain
On a much (much!) smaller scale, NASA (et al) have used this slingshot (or gravity assist) effect often to save on fuel when sending probes to other planets in our solar system. Check out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist for an impressive list of missions that have swung around various planets to gain (or shed) speed.
There was a second group of astrophysicists that published a paper last summer that had data claiming that Sagittarius A was surrounded by possibly millions of black holes, wouldn't that potentially imply that Sag A is something other than a black hole? The paper from last summer is under peer review if I understood things correctly.
I think I found what you were referring to, here's one write-up:
The Milky Way Is Hiding Tens Of Thousands Of Black Holes
There is no reason that the "super massive" Sagittarius A couldn't be a black hole surrounded by lots of other more normal sized black holes. Sagittarius A (and the super-massive black holes at the center of most galaxies) are the result of lots of smaller black holes merging. They're estimating now that there are over 10,000 black holes not too far from the center of the Milky Way.
Note the black-hole mergers that LIGO has detected have not involved super-massive black holes (yet). The collisions that they have detected so far range in size from 56 to 80 times the size of our sun. From Phys.org:
Scientists detect biggest known black-hole collision
The group that released the image that the graphic diagrams stated that the image was of the center of another galaxy. Would that center have some commonalities with our own Sag A?"
Sag-A is the super-massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The released image was of the super-massive black hole at the center of the "nearby" galaxy M87. The black hole at Sagittarius-A has about four million times the mass of our sun. The black hole at the center of M87 has about 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun. I.e. the M87 black hole is about 1625 times the size of the one at the center of the Milky way. But they are both super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies.
If so, which group of astrophysicists are wrong, the one that published Hubble data last summer, or the current group that used coordinated earth bound telescopes?
Sorry, I really don't see a conflict. Agree?
Postscript: In theory, mass does slowly escape after falling inside the event horizon. But it's due to
Hawking Radiation and has nothing to do with what's producing the observed jets.
Disclaimer: my background is computer science, not physics nor astronomy. Apologies if I've gotten anything wrong.
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