A team of astronomers has spotted a massive radio jet streaming from a quasar, a bright object dating back to the first 1 billion years of the universe. The jet is estimated to be at least 200,000 light-years across and is twice as wide as our Milky Way galaxy.
The discovery was made possible by advances in telescopes that can see through the cosmic microwave background, a remnant of the Big Bang, which had obscured such objects from view in the distant past. The quasar powering this jet formed when the universe was just 9% of its current age.
The mass of the quasar is equivalent to 450 million times our sun, but its black hole is not particularly massive. The team used observatories across Europe and in Hawaii and Texas to make the discovery, which has been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This finding provides new insights into the early universe and the growth of supermassive black holes at their centers.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/universe-quasar-monster-radio-het-0822cd50b4f39c5902146c1ea893a76f