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NASA is behind another finding of a supermassive black hole! This time something about the astrophysics field was found, a supermassive black hole releasing jets of magma bigger than the Milky Way. This was found in a far away radio galaxy thanks to data obtained from different telescopes and observatories.
Another discovery that will open a window to further studies on how active galaxies behave the universe
and how the jets can be developed in black holes. So, let’s start with this article and learn more about this new NASA discovery!
The discovery
Astronomers have found a striking phenomenon in the universe, a supermassive black hole releasing powerful jets of magma in a quasar called J1601 + 3102 (a bright galaxy with a black hole in its center).
The remarkable thing about this was the fact that the jets of magma are spread through 215,000 light years, which is more than twice of the Milky Way’s width (100,000 light years of diameter). This means the structure of the jets of magma is the biggest of this type ever seen in the earliest stage of the universe.
What’s a quasar? What about jets?
A quasar is a galaxy with a supermassive black hole in its center which is absorbing huge amounts of materia, this makes the black hole heat because of the friction and gravity. Then, it releases a lot of light which makes it much easier for scientists to see these mysterious and invisible elements of the universe.
What about the jets? Well, not all the materia goes into the
black hole
, some of it goes throughout the magnetic field lines around the black hole and it is released in the form of jets of magma. These jets can’t be seen with regular light because they emit radio waves and it’s necessary the use of specialized radio telescopes.
Not that big of a supermassive black hole
The jets of magma were so powerful you might think they come from a huge black hole, but it’s not that massive as previously observed ones. It has around 450 million times the Sun’s mass. I know this number seems huge, but it’s not that much if you compare it to other black holes.
Tools to make this discovery possible
Anniek Gloudemans is an astrophysicist from the NOIRLab, an institution of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States. She was in charge of a group of astronomers for this mission and they used different telescopes to make combined observations:
- The LOFAR Telescope (Low Frequency Array) in Europe. It’s a radio telescope used to observe the jets.
- The Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. It was used to make observations with visible light.
- The Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas. It is specific for optical observations.
These telescopes allowed the group of astronomers to see the whole extension of the jets, analyze the light emitted by the quasar and estimate the mass of the black hole.
Relevance of the discovery
This discovery made astronomers think differently about the way the jets of magma are formed. According to Anniej Gloudemans, she said something like the quasar doesn’t have a mass of the black hole as extremely high as other quasars, which means it’s not necessary a supermassive black hole nor with a high rate of accretion to generate powerful jets in the early stage of the universe.
Basically, quasars and their jets could be more different that what astronomers thought because the processes that create them could have started before and in different ways in comparison with what it was recently assumed.
Another win for science and NASA, what might come next? We never know what we could be surprised with tomorrow.
