WASHINGTON : Two mighty beams of energy have been detected shooting in opposite directions from a supermassive black hole inside a distant galaxy - the largest such jets ever spotted, extending about 140 times the diameter of our vast Milky Way galaxy.
An artist's illustration of the longest black hole jet system ever observed, spanning 23 million light-years in total length, a distance equal to about 140 times the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. Scientists have given the jet system the nickname Porphyrion, the name of a giant from ancient Greek mythology. E. Wernquist / D. Nelson / M. Oei/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES.
The two jet structures documented in the new study - using the LOFAR radio telescope, a network of antennas centered in the Netherlands - extend 23 million light-years from end to end. "Jet systems like Porphyrion appear to be among the most energetic spectacles that have occurred in the universe since the Big Bang," said Caltech astrophysicist Martijn Oei, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, referring to the event that initiated the universe about 13.8 billion years ago.
"That is equivalent to the energy released during the most cataclysmic cosmic collisions: for example, those that occur when two galaxy clusters, each sometimes containing thousands of galaxies, merge together," Oei said.
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