Using 16 years of data from NASA’s gamma-ray detecting Fermi spacecraft, astronomers have discovered that “microquasars,” systems in which a black hole is slowly devouring a star, may be small, but they pack one heck of a punch.

Despite their diminutive nature, the research ‘Persistent GeV Counterpart to the Microquasar GRS 1915+105‘ suggests even microquasars snacking on small stars can have an impressive cosmic influence, becoming powerful natural particle accelerators. This means black holes indulging in stellar meals of all sizes could be responsible for a higher-than-suspected amount of high-energy charged particles called “cosmic rays,” which are constantly bombarding Earth. The mechanism for this particle acceleration is the near-light-speed jets that blast out from microquasars. What Martí-Devesa and team co-leader Laura Olivera-Nieto from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics found is a new source of gamma-rays that is consistent with the position of GRS 1915+105, a well-known microquasar in which a black hole is slowly feasting on a low-mass star.

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Black holes snacking on small stars create particle accelerators that bombard Earth with cosmic rays