Astronomers have discovered a truly ancient monster: a jet of radio radiation estimated to be 200,000 light-years wide, thought to have been around since the universe was less than 10 percent of its current age. Using intensive observations with the Gemini North telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are studying the jet to learn more about how supermassive black holes release their enormous energy, and how they formed in the early universe.
The jet, dubbed J1601+310, has two spots (or lobes) radiating from a central point that span twice the size of our entire galaxy (the Milky Way). This makes it the largest radio jet ever observed in the early universe. At the center of the jet is an object called a quasar. This is essentially the extremely bright core of a galaxy, also known as an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which contains a supermassive black hole at its center.
“ We are searching for quasars with strong radio emissions in the early universe, which will help us better understand how and when the first outflows formed, as well as their impact on the evolution of galaxies ,” explains Anniek Gloudemans, principal investigator of the project at NOIRLab of the US National Science Foundation.
The researchers found that the jet was formed when the universe was less than 1.2 billion years old — by comparison, the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. While many might think that it would take a supermassive black hole to create such a massive jet, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The black hole at the center of the jet is smaller than other quasars.
“ The interesting fact is that the quasar that produced this giant radio emission does not have a very large black hole mass compared to other quasars, which seems to indicate that you don't necessarily need a black hole with a very large mass or a high annealing rate to produce such powerful radio emissions in the early universe .”
Researchers are still unsure why this relatively small black hole could produce such a large jet of radiation. Or why other similar black holes don’t produce large jets of their own. Observations of very large jets in the early universe are extremely rare, so gaining more information about when the first jets formed is invaluable.
Despite its enormous size, the newly discovered jet is extremely distant, so the researchers had to use data from both ground-based and space telescopes to study it. “ Because this object is so unique, we can see it from Earth, even though it is so far away. This object shows what we can discover by combining the power of multiple telescopes operating at different wavelengths .”
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