Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist.
Astronomers have spotted the biggest pair of black hole jets ever seen — at 23 million light-years in length, they are as long as 140 Milky Way galaxies laid end to end.
"This pair is not just the size of a solar system, or a Milky Way; we are talking about 140 Milky Way diameters in total," study lead author Martijn Oei, a postdoctoral scholar of observational astronomy at Caltech, said in an email statement."The Milky Way would be a little dot in these two giant eruptions."
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.To better answer that question, the researchers searched for hidden black hole jets by scanning the LOFAR radio images by eye, using machine learning tools and citizen scientists to help identify any jets they missed.
"Up until now, these giant jet systems appeared to be a phenomenon of the recent universe," Oei said."If distant jets like these can reach the scale of the cosmic web, then every place in the universe may have been affected by black hole activity at some point in cosmic time."
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Biggest black hole jets ever seen span 140 Milky Way galaxiesAndrew Paul is Popular Science's staff writer covering tech news. Previously, he was a regular contributor to The A.V. Club and Input, and has had recent work featured by Rolling Stone, Fangoria, GQ, Slate, NBC, as well as McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He lives outside Indianapolis.
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