Thread by @sarahsalviander

The funny thing about gravity is that it's very weak compared with the other forces, but it's also the dominant force shaping the universe on large scales. Sound confusing?

Consider...

Weak: You can overcome the gravity of the entire Earth with just a small magnet.

Dominant: Gravity (indirectly) produces things like this. These are plasma jets shooting out of the core of a galaxy. These jets extend for hundreds of thousands of lys, like streams from a colossal cosmic firehose, big enough to dwarf the galaxy from which they're emanating.

Those plasma jets were produced by a supermassive black hole actively feeding on material. As interstellar gas pours down onto the black hole, the extreme gravity near the black hole speeds it up until it forms a surrounding, super-heated disk of matter. (see illustration below)

This superhot disk of matter generates torqued up magnetic fields that act as cosmic particle accelerators, shooting gargantuan streams of charged particles into intergalactic space. And it's all ultimately powered by the same force that's overpowered by a fridge magnet on Earth.

Let's round this out with a gorgeous image of the radio galaxy, Centaurus A. This is a composite image showing the galaxy and its twin jets, powered by a supermassive black hole in its core, at visible wavelengths + radio (orange) and X-ray (blue) wavelengths.