\n<\/p>\n
Illustration of the giant black hole jets known as Porphyrion<\/p>\n
Caltech<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
A pair of jets blasting out of a black hole spans 23 million light years, the equivalent of 220 Milky Way galaxies in length. This is so large that it may change our understanding both of black holes and the structure of the universe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think of jets as a thing, then you could say this is the largest object that we know of in the universe,\u201d says Martin Hardcastle at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.<\/p>\n
The jets, which Hardcastle and his colleagues have named Porphyrion, come from a black hole in a distant galaxy, some 7.5 billion light years from Earth. The light reaching us from them now started its journey when the universe was just 6.3 billion years old, only about half the age it is now.<\/p>\n
The researchers identified the jets, as well as at least 10 other sets of jets that are also millions of light years across, using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, which consists of thousands of radio antennas across many European countries. Follow-up observations using telescopes in India and Hawaii then helped to locate the host galaxy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n To produce such vast jets, the black hole responsible would have needed to ingest about a sun\u2019s worth of matter each year for a billion years, says Hardcastle. As matter falls into the black hole over this time frame, some of it will be twisted and accelerated by the black hole\u2019s magnetic field, blasting it out into space to form the jets.<\/p>\n \n