Question #f8f75

1 Answer
Oct 6, 2015

Some gas and light will escape from the area around the black hole in a quasar.

Explanation:

A quasar (quasi-stellar radio source) is another name for the area around a super-massive black hole in the center of a galaxy. The name exists for historical reasons, before we figured out that the things that we were seeing with our radio telescopes were actually black holes.

So I guess the answer depends on means what you mean by escape. Not all of the gas around a super-massive black hole will eventually fall in (black holes don't suck).

Also, they tend to from massive jets of material, which are ejected from the system. We see many different kinds of light coming from the gas in the disk and jet around the black hole, so the light escapes as well.

Here is a picture of a million light year-long jet coming from a quasar (shown in X-rays):
CHANDRA X-ray Observatory CXC Operated for NASA by SAO via Wikimedia commons

However, when astronomers talk about quasars, they generally include the black hole, the gas disk and the jet. So, no the black hole cannot escape from itself.