Giant Black Hole Jet Structure Discovered by International Team

On September 20, TapTechNews reported that an international team led by Dutch astronomer Martijn Oei discovered a pair of huge jets about 23 million light-years long, which is 140 times that of the Milky Way and is also the largest known black hole jet structure in human history so far.

Researchers came to their discovery through the LOFAR telescope network, and their research results were published as the cover article of Nature magazine this Thursday (TapTechNews attached DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07879-y).

Researchers named this wonder after the Greek mythological giant Porphyrion (also translated as Polyphemus, the king of giants and the leader of giants, born of Gaia, the mother of the earth, and Uranus, the Titan god).

Scientists said that this high-power jet from a supermassive black hole (SMBHs) has lasted for millions of years and has become the largest galactic structure in the universe.

These high-energy flows affect the distribution of matter and magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium (IGM) by injecting electrons, atomic nuclei and magnetic fields.

Over the past 50 years, the known size range of black hole jet pairs is 4.6 - 5.0 Mpc, or 20 - 30% of the radius of the cosmic void in the local universe, indicating that its structure has a growth limit at about 5 Mpc.

This structure discovered this time spans about 7 Mpc, or about 66% of the radius of the cosmic void at the same time, and it is obviously generated by a black hole formed about 630 million years after the big bang at 4.4 (-0.7 ~ +0.2). The structure consists of the northern lobe, the northern jet, the core, the southern jet with an internal hot spot and the southern external hot spot with a backflow.

The system shows that even in an era when the universe density is 7 to 15 (-2 ~ +6) times higher than now, the jet can avoid being destroyed by magnetohydrodynamic instabilities and cross a long cosmic distance, but more research is needed to understand the mechanical principle of Porphyrion remaining stable.