Biggest Particle Accelerator Yet

[Jason]

VLA Yields New Insights on Solar Flares

Astronomers have made a significant step toward confirming a proposed explanation for how solar flares accelerate charged particles to speeds nearly that of light. This important advance was made possible by the new capabilities of the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope.

Solar flares, the most powerful explosions in the Solar System, can accelerate large numbers of charged particles to nearly the speed of light. How they do that, however, has been uncertain.

https://public.nrao.edu/news/pressrelea ... are-shocks

Turns out our Sun has been accelerating particles to nearly the speed of light for some billions of years. I wonder how this relates to the recent discovery of the magnetic fields surrounding black holes. Could black holes be accelerating particles too?

[Jason]

Picture they have is pretty neat.

[mistermack]

Turns out our Sun has been accelerating particles to nearly the speed of light for some billions of years. I wonder how this relates to the recent discovery of the magnetic fields surrounding black holes. Could black holes be accelerating particles too?

I can't see any reason why not. We can aim a space probe to just miss a planet like Jupiter, and it gets a speed boost to help it on it's way. Some particles might get the same effect off a black hole.
I don't know what the process is called, or how it comes about. But if we can do it, it's sure to happen to some particles out of the squillions that approach close to a black hole.