Black hole jumbo jets are the biggest we've ever seen

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-09-19 01:00

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This is an artist's impression of a runaway supermassive black hole that was ejected from its host galaxy as a result of a tussle between it and two other black holes. Credits: Artwork - NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI) Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash

Astronomers have spotted the biggest pair of black hole jets ever seen, spanning 23 million light-years in total length – equivalent to lining up 140 Milky Way galaxies back-to-back. The team analysed radio images from the International LOFAR Telescope to study black hole energy flows on the megaparsec scale, and through this process, they identified the jets which they have named Porphyrion, after a giant in Greek Mythology. The jumbo jets blast hot plasma well beyond their own host galaxy with the power equivalent to a trillion suns, and researchers think the megastructure dates to a time when our universe was 6.3 billion years old – less than half its current age. The finding suggests that these giant jet systems may have had a larger influence on the formation of galaxies in the young universe than previously believed, according to the team.

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From: Springer Nature

Astronomy: Longest known black hole jets detected

A giant jet pair emanating from a black hole has been detected and is described in Nature. The jets, which have a combined length of approximately 7 megaparsecs or about 23 million light years, are the largest jets from a black hole reported to date.

Supermassive black holes can emit powerful jets of radiation and particles that, when sustained for millions of years, can impact the flow of matter through the intergalactic medium by shooting electrons, atomic nuclei, and magnetic fields through space. Previous observations of black hole jets suggested that their size could not exceed 5 megaparsecs, where 1 parsec is approximately 3.26 light years.

Martijn Oei and colleagues analysed radio images from the International LOFAR Telescope to study black hole energy flows on the megaparsec scale. Through this process, the researchers identified large jets, which they named Porphyrion. An initial examination of the telescope data revealed the jets’ combined length to be at least 6.43 megaparsecs. Oei and colleagues note that the jets likely extend further into space: since images are flat, Porphyrion's length component along the line of sight remains tricky to measure. The researchers corrected for this effect using mathematical formulae and arrived at a total length for Porphyrion of 6.8–7.3 megaparsecs.

The authors conclude that Porphyrion’s existence is evidence that jets from supermassive black holes can avoid being destroyed by fluid instabilities over vast cosmological distances. However, they note that understanding the mechanics that kept Porphyrion stable requires more research.

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conference: Nature

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: California Institute of Technology, USA

Funder: M.S.S.L.O. and R.J.v.W. acknowledge support from the VIDI research programme with project number 639.042.729, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). M.S.S.L.O. also acknowledges support from the CAS–NWO programme for radio astronomy with project number 629.001.024, which is financed by the NWO. In addition, M.S.S.L.O., R.T. and R.J.v.W. acknowledge support from the ERC Starting Grant ClusterWeb 804208. M.J.H. acknowledges support from the UK STFC (ST/V000624/1). R.T. is grateful for support from the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (grant MR/T042842/1). A.B. acknowledges financial support from the European Union - Next Generation EU. F.d.G. acknowledges support from the ERC Consolidator Grant ULU 101086378. The work of D.S. was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). We thank F. Sweijen for making available legacystamps67. We thank R. Caniato and J.H. Croston for illuminating discussions. LOFAR data products were provided by the LOFAR Surveys Key Science project (LSKSP68) and were derived from observations with the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT). LOFAR30 is the LOw-Frequency ARray designed and constructed by ASTRON. It has observing, data-processing and data-storage facilities in several countries, which are owned by various parties (each with their own funding sources) and which are collectively operated by the ILT foundation under a joint scientific policy. The efforts of the LSKSP have benefited from funding from the European Research Council, NOVA, NWO, CNRS-INSU, the SURF Co-operative, the UK Science and Technology Funding Council and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. We thank the staff of the GMRT, who made these observations possible. The GMRT is run by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.

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