Astronomers made a remarkable discovery—one of the biggest pair of jets that appear to shoot from behind a supermassive black hole 7.5 billion light-years from Earth.
Using some quick arithmetic, scientists calculated that these jets stretch for 23 million light years. Such big black hole jets have never been seen before. It is in a new study explaining this earth-shattering discovery that fundamentally changes our understanding of how black holes work on the galactic level.
What are Black Hole Jets?
Often dubbed cosmic vacuum cleaners, black holes suck in everything that crosses their path. Before matter is swallowed, some of it gets out into space and creates two powerful beams of energy on opposite sides of the black hole.
The compositions of these beams are radiations and particles traveling close to the speed of light, so radio telescopes easily detect bright light. It is precisely how astronomers found those enormous jets by sky surveying in 2018 with the European radio telescope, the LOw-Frequency Array.
The Megastructure Porphyrion
According to CNN, these jets, developed by newly found supermassive black holes with an energy production that outshines trillions of suns, are so potent that scientists named the structure "Porphyrion" after a giant in Greek mythology. Such a discovery is essential since it invalidates long-held assumptions regarding the size and effects that black hole jets can have.
This isn't just a solar system or even a Milky Way-sized structure," said Martijn Oei, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of the study.
"This pair is not just the size of a solar system or a Milky Way; we are talking about 140 Milky Way diameters. The Milky Way would be a little dot in these two giant eruptions," " Oei said.
Black Hole Jets Redefined and Their Significance for the Universe
Before such a discovery, most astronomers believed that an extensive jet system was rather unusual and could be much smaller.
The finding of Porphyrion suggests that these jets may be much more massive than one could have assumed before. Scientists now think of this fact and, therefore, reconsider the function black hole jets play in the structure formation of the universe.
These massive jets can interact with their surroundings by spewing out charged particles and magnetic fields into intergalactic space. The warming from the jets of Porphyrion was able to increase the temperature of the surrounding space to 1 million degrees.
According to the research results, such heating could potentially slow the formation of galaxies since the infalling gas of intergalactic space would not be able to collapse into new star systems.
A Serendipitous Discovery
A strange coincidence—the discovery was in the search for something else the team of astronomers had been looking for. While exploring the excellent matter web crossing between the galaxies called the web, they instead found the jets. Researchers found 10,000 new black hole jet pairs, along with Porphyrion, among those astronauts.
The study's co-author, Alvin Gast, was studying classical archaeology when, during the pandemic, she came to the team and played a key role in visually inspecting these radio images, leading to the discovery of Porphyrion. Classical archaeological background inspired the system's nomination based on the giant's name from ancient mythology.
Future Research Directions of the Black Hole Jet
Astronomers believe it will be only a matter of time before a much bigger black hole jet is found as technology advances. Using follow-up observations from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the team tracked jets back to a distant galaxy ten times the Milky Way's mass.
The team did not expect this—in fact, the researchers say they never looked for it since such a type of black hole is generally not considered to be involved in such activity: these black holes are, instead, known to operate in a radiative mode.
This also hints at the possibility of radiative-mode black holes being the primary sources of extreme jets, contrary to previous belief that jet-mode black holes are one of the primary sources of such structures.
Black Hole Jets and the Magnetization of the Universe
What's pretty exciting about this research is it opens the scope for a link between black hole jets and the magnetization of the universe.
From the charged particles released into space, this magnetism spread may begin within the cosmic web and influence the formation of galaxies and maybe even the life on a planet like Earth.
It's precisely here that scientists might unlock answers to some of the universe's greatest mysteries of galactic magnetism and the cosmic web.
The discovery of Porphyrion proves a tremendous step forward in interpreting black hole jets and their influence on the universe. Further studies of these gigantic structures may contain secrets far beyond our imagination, explaining forces that shape galaxies, stars, and planets in the cosmos.
Related Article: Astronomers Discover Massive Black Hole Feeding Frenzy in Distant Galaxy
