Meet Porphyrion, the largest pair of black hole jets ever seen

The two plasma fountains, spanning 23 million light-years, could shape cosmic structures far beyond their home galaxy.

Sep 18, 2024 - 22:30

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Meet Porphyrion, the largest pair of black hole jets ever seen

The gargantuan fountains may per chance shape cosmic structures some distance beyond their very own galaxy

A fiery beam of sunshine — emerging from two sides of a black hole — shoots across a dark background strewn with scattered silvery wisps and occasional bright dots representing galaxies.

High-energy jets emerge from two sides of a black hole (illustrated). The black hole resides in a galaxy it be a portion of a filament of the cosmic web (silvery wisps).

E. Wernquist, M. Oei, D. Nelson/IllustrisTNG Collaboration

Opposing fountains of plasma and particles spanning 23 million light-years are the longest pair of black hole jets ever seen. That’s some distance enough to steer the evolution of the universe on cosmic scales, astronomers report September 18 in Nature.

“Traditionally, astronomers believed all jets remain within, or as a minimum very on the topic of, their host galaxy,” said astrophysicist Martijn Oei of Caltech in a news conference on September sixteen. “We present evidence that supermassive black holes don’t only hold sway over the galaxy, but also of the cosmic web that surrounds them.”

Astronomers think that everybody massive galaxies host a gargantuan black hole at their center, and loads of those galaxies shoot high-energy fountains of charged plasma into space. Those jets influence the structure and evolution of the galaxy they’re embedded in, slowing down and even shutting off star formation (SN: 10/13/23).

The newly found out pair, nicknamed Porphyrion after a rebellious giant in Greek mythology, were spotted in observations from LOFAR, a network of radio wave detectors in the Netherlands. Porphyrion’s prodigious size — it outstretches the previous record holder by about 7 million light-years — hints that its influence may per chance outstrip the limits of mere galaxies.

A faint yellow stripe on a mottled blue and green background, with labels identifying the jets, their ends, the host galaxy, and a span of 23 million light-years. — This picture from the LOFAR telescope array shows the longest black hole jets ever observed, seen as faint lines extending diagonally across the image from the head left to the underside right.LOFAR Collaboration, M. Oei/CaltechThis picture from the LOFAR telescope array shows the longest black hole jets ever observed, seen as faint lines extending diagonally across the image from the head left to the underside right.LOFAR Collaboration, M. Oei/Caltech

Follow-up observations suggest that Porphyrion’s home galaxy is embedded in a filament of the cosmic web, the tangled skein of gas and galaxies where a lot of the universe’s ordinary matter resides (SN: Three/6/23). The jets also existed in an early epoch of the universe’s history, about 0.5 of its present age, when the filaments of the cosmic web were closer together than they're this day. Oei and colleagues calculate that the jets may per chance span two-thirds of ways across the voids between cosmic filaments.

And Porphyrion is never very on my own. A citizen science effort to identify other large black hole jets has turned up greater than 10,000 that span roughly Three million light-years or more, though none as large as Porphyrion.

“Those large black hole jet systems may per chance be less rare than we thought,” Oei said. “So that they'll want a bigger influence than we expected.”