Supermassive black holes can expel jets of material so vast and powerful that they may shape the large-scale structure of the cosmos
An artist's illustration of the longest black hole jet system ever observed. Nicknamed Porphyrion after a mythological Greek giant, these jets span roughly 7 megaparsecs, or 23 million light-years. That is equivalent to lining up 140 Milky Way galaxies back-to-back.
Black holes occasionally generate jets when they overeat, as matter piles up around their maw and encounters extreme astrophysical forces. All matter that approaches a black hole takes on the form of a spiraling disk. This disk whirls around at such a rapid pace that the. A spinning black hole can then twist these magnetic fields into tight cones at each of its rotational poles. Most matter exiting the disk will speed straight into the mouth of the black hole.
Streams as ancient and colossal as Porphyrion may have contributed to some of the early universe’s features, says lead study author Martijn Oei, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. Porphyrion’s jets are estimated to contain the total power of trillions of suns and raise the temperature of surrounding gas by a million degrees Celsius. This means they may have inhibited the formation of not just stars but entire galaxies in the early universe. Their high-speed sprays of magnetized ejecta also could have pierced and filled voids in
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