Aimed at Earth: the Milky Way’s first microblazar and the galaxy’s fastest particles

In our own galaxy, a black hole is firing a jet nearly straight at Earth. Astronomers have confirmed it as the Milky Way's first microblazar, and where its near-light-speed jet strikes a molecular cloud, it may forge particles at PeV energies — roughly 100 times those of the Large Hadron Collider — a possible engine for the galaxy's most extreme cosmic rays.