They find the longest jets thrown by a black hole.

2024/09/24 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astrofisika
• Astronomia

A group of international astronomers discover the longest jets a black hole has thrown. These are two jets that add 23 million years of light each (11.5 light years each) or 140 times the diameter of the Milky Way. The finding has been published in the journal Nature.

Porfirion is the name of the pair of jets. The universe is 6.3 billion years old, less than half the current age (13,800). They come out of a supermassive black hole in the center of a distant galaxy, from one side to the other, and they have a power equivalent to a trillion sun.

This finding suggests that these types of jets can influence more than you imagine in the formation of galaxies in the young universe. In fact, they throw matter over long distances and for millions of years. This matter can cross the intergalactic cosmic voids, which may have accelerated the evolution of the universe.