Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole in the early universe, blasting out powerful jets of plasma that stretch over 215,000 light-years. The quasar, J1601+3102, is one of the largest structures of its kind seen in the early stages of the universe’s formation. Researchers believe this discovery can help answer questions about how these massive black holes grow.
The supermassive black hole is found at the center of a galaxy and feeds on material that swirls around it, forming a disk that heats up to millions of degrees. As the material is heated, it produces jets that blast out into space with tremendous speed. The longest observed jet was 23 million light-years long.
The discovery was made possible by combining observations from multiple telescopes, including the LOFAR Telescope in Europe and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas. By analyzing the light emitted by the quasar activity, researchers were able to determine that the black hole has a mass of 450 million times that of the sun.
Surprisingly, this massive black hole does not have an extremely high rate of matter accretion, which challenges previous assumptions about how these massive black holes grow. The finding suggests that powerful jets can be generated by smaller black holes with lower accretion rates.
This discovery has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/giant-jets-bigger-than-the-milky-way-seen-shooting-from-black-hole