Scientists have recently made a groundbreaking discovery of the longest pair of jets emanating from a black hole located in a distant galaxy. These jets, consisting of hot plasma, are the largest ever observed, measuring approximately the length of 140 Milky Way galaxies placed end to end. The study, led by a team of researchers and astronomers, utilized data from a European radio telescope and their findings were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
Eileen Meyer, a black hole researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who was not directly involved in the study, expressed amazement at the immense size the jets have attained. Black holes typically consume most of the material that comes their way, but occasionally, high-energy jets of heated plasma manage to escape, propelled away from the black hole.
While such jets can sometimes disintegrate due to space disturbances or lack of new material, those originating from supermassive black holes have the potential to grow significantly larger. The recently discovered jets extending from a distant supermassive black hole span a whopping 23 million light-years, surpassing the previous record-holder by approximately 7 million light-years. It’s worth noting that one light-year equals about 5.8 trillion miles.
Martijn Oei, a co-author of the study, mentioned that the research team had not anticipated finding such long black hole jets from the early stages of the universe’s formation. The jets in question trace back to a period when the universe was less than half its current age. Oei, affiliated with the California Institute of Technology, highlighted the importance of studying these jets to understand their potential impact on the formation of the early universe.
