A detailed view of the fast outflows produced by supermassive black holes

Supermassive black holes can power fast, well-collimated jets of magnetized plasma that transport energy from the black hole – accretion disk system to distances of hundreds of thousands of light years. Many physical processes governing the jets are not well-understood including their formation, stability, magnetic field structure, and energy dissipation. Long-term monitoring of a large sample of active galactic nuclei jets using ultra-high resolution radio interferometry is bringing us closer to the answers to these questions.