Discover Porphyry, a black hole that created a structure larger than the Milky Way

A team of astronomers recently announced the discovery of a huge black hole emitting jets of plasma and radiation 23 million light years into space beyond its home galaxy. Fired in opposite directions, the two jets represent the largest lightning ever observed in the sky deep, the equivalent to the width of 140 milky ways.

One of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe, black hole jets are incredibly powerful streams of matter and energy emitted by some of these supermassive celestial bodies, usually located at the center of active galaxies.

Composed mainly of plasma (gas in which atoms have lost or gained electrons), these jets can extend over distances of millions of light years into space. They emit radiation at various frequencies, especially in the radio band .

In an article reported in the magazine Natureresearchers explain how they used the European network of radio antennas known as Lofar (acronym in English for Low Frequency Array) to observe the colossal radio structure.

Astronomers named the black hole Porphyry name of one of the most powerful giants in Greek mythology.

Studying jets from black holes

In a press release, the paper’s first author, Martijn Oei, a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), explains that his team began using Lofar in 2018.

At first, the goal was not to study jets from black holes, but the so-called cosmic web the large-scale structure of the universe, made of immense tenuous filaments of matter that interconnect different galaxies.

As they analyzed the radio images, the authors were surprised by the presence of several jet systems of astonishingly long sizes.

“We had no idea there were so many,” says Oei.

To systematize the search for more hidden jets, they used machine learning to scan images, in addition to enlisting the help of a team of citizen scientists around the world.

To reach Porfirio’s host galaxy, the team used the Large Radio Metrewave Telescope (GMRT) in India, and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in the United States.

They discovered that the Porphyry megastructure dates from a time when the Universe was 6.3 billion years old, that is, less than half of what it is today (13.8 billion years old).

These powerful flows of matter and energy (called relativistic jets because they travel in speeds close to that of light ) are thrown violently above and below the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

“By pumping electrons, atomic nuclei and magnetic fields into the intergalactic medium, these energetic flows affect the distribution of matter and magnetism in the cosmic web,” the study states.

Discoveries and mysteries about Porfírio

Also using the installation WM Keck, two twin observatories at the top of the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, the team made a surprising finding: Porphyry comes from a black hole active in radioactive mode.

This means that, theoretically, it should be emitting mainly energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation not jets.

“Until now, these giant jet systems appeared to be a phenomenon of the recent universe,” explains Oei.

But as Porphyry is in the distant universe, where there is a profusion of radioactive black holes, the discovery suggests that there may be other colossal jets to be found.

And then a question arises, still unanswered: how can these jets extend so far beyond their host galaxies without destabilizing their structure?

In future research, Oei intends to better understand how structures like Porfírio are influencing their surroundings.

In addition to the scattering of cosmic rays, heat and heavy atoms, it is of particular interest magnetism .

“Magnetism on our planet allows life to thrive, so we want to understand how it came about,” he says.

It is known that magnetism permeates the cosmic web, where it follows a hierarchy: from filaments of dark matter and gas to galaxies, then to stars and finally to planets.

This means that there is a connection or even a magnetism transfer system between these cosmic instances.

The question that will guide the next research is: “Where does it start? Do these giant jets spread magnetism throughout the cosmos? “, asks Oei.

This content was originally published in Meet Porfírio, a black hole that created a structure larger than the Milky Way on the CNN Brasil website.

Source: CNN Brasil