Massive streams of material identified in outer space
This unbelievable expanse: A black hole launches substance streams 23 million light-years across the cosmos. Previously, the furthest stretch was 16 million light-years. This breakthrough could crack a cosmic enigma.
We've got a new record-breaker in space: A black hole blasts material in two tidy streams, stretching out over an astonishing 23 million light-years. This incredible find was announced in the journal "Nature" by an international research team. The previous farthest these 'jets' had traveled was just 16 million light-years.
Black holes, present in almost every galaxy, pack millions or billions of times the sun's mass. "We now know that galaxies and black holes co-develop," explains George Djorgovski from Caltech. "Crucially, jets transport significant energy outward, affecting galaxy growth in the vicinity. This latest discovery suggests that this impact extends much further than we thought."
Draws in and Slingbacks
Black holes exert a powerful gravitational pull that attracts gas from their surroundings, adding to their mass. Some of the gas, however, doesn't wind up in the black hole. Instead, it gets pushed away by magnetic fields and fired back out as two material beams from the black hole's magnetic poles.
Until just a few years ago, astronomers considered jets to typically reach a few hundred thousand light-years. Only a rare few stretched out to several million light-years.
That changed in 2018: While examining large-scale cosmic structures with the LOFAR antenna array in Europe, a research team spotted numerous material beams over millions of light-years. "We were shocked," says Martijn Oei from Caltech, "because we thought such long jets were rare."
The Longest Material Beam is Named after a Mythical Giant
LOFAR has now detected over 8000 pairs of jets shot out from black holes. Researchers have even christened the longest one "Porphyrion," after a giant from Greek mythology. These newly found jets are around ten times the distance between our Milky Way and the Andromeda Nebula, the nearest major galaxy.
To track the origin of the "Porphyrion" beams, Oei, Djorgovski, and their colleagues conducted additional observations with several giant telescopes. They eventually found a colossal galaxy at the center of these two jets, around ten times larger than our Milky Way, and situated a staggering 7.5 billion light-years away from Earth.
Insight: Massive Material Beams Existed for Ages
"We believed that particularly large jets were a cosmic trend of our current era," says Oei. "Porphyrion," however, suggests that they've been around for a long time. This implies that jets have also played a role in the cosmic evolution. "Every corner of the universe," says Oei, "might have been affected by black hole activity at one point."
LOFAR's discoveries are probably just the tip of the iceberg. "LOFAR has only scanned 15 percent of the sky," emphasizes Oei. "Thus, we speculate that there are many more of these giants out there."
The discovery of these massive jets could also solve a cosmic mystery: the origin of stars and planets' magnetic fields. Perhaps, suggests Oei, they originate from the giant black holes - and the jets have carried them out into the vastness of space.
The study of cosmic structures has revealed that black holes can launch material streams over astonishing distances, with the latest record set at 23 million light-years. This breakthrough in cosmology suggests that the impact of black hole jets on galaxy growth extends much further than previously thought.
Black hole jets, such as the mythical 'Porphyrion,' have been found to travel over tens of millions of light-years, challenging our understanding of cosmic evolution and potentially offering insights into the origin of stars and planets' magnetic fields.
