Biggest ever black hole jets detected by astronomers, named Porphyrion
The largest known black hole jets, 23 million light years across, have been discovered in the distant universe. This pair of particle beams launched by a supermassive black hole is over a hundred times larger than our galaxy, the Milky Way.
In 2022, we announced the discovery of one of the largest black hole jets in the night sky, launched from a (relatively) nearby galaxy called NGC2663. Using CSIRO's Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) in Western Australia, we confirmed that NGC2663's jet is one of the largest in the sky. In other words, it appears to be the largest when viewed from Earth.
The new jet, announced in the journal Nature, has been dubbed “Porphyrion” (a giant in Greek mythology) by its discoverers at the California Institute of Technology in the United States. It dwarfs NGC2663's jet in actual size and is over 20 times larger – a true colossus.
Porphyrion can tell us more about the great ecosystem of matter flowing inside and outside of galaxies. But this jet also has us scratching our heads: how can something 23 million light years across be almost perfectly straight?
Porphyrion was discovered by astronomers using the International LOFAR Telescope, a network of radio sensors centred in the Netherlands, and stretching from Sweden to Bulgaria, and from Ireland to Latvia. Radio telescopes like ASKAP and LOFAR can see light that is invisible to our eyes: radio waves.
What launches the jet in the first place? At the centre of the jet, researchers see a galaxy, and at the centre of the galaxy, they find evidence of a supermassive black hole.
As matter is pulled towards the black hole, various fates await. Some matter is eaten entirely. Some orbits around the black hole, forming a disk. And some of it becomes twisted and tangled in intense magnetic fields, until it is released into two opposing jets, blasting at almost the speed of light.
We've seen black hole jets before, even ones that stretch many millions of light years. What's striking about
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