Black hole jets light up gas hundreds of thousands of light-years from home
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Black hole jets light up gas hundreds of thousands of light-years from home
A supermassive black hole's jet can leave a trail of glowing gas hundreds of thousands of light-years long, well past the visible edge of its galaxy. The finding comes from a study led by Namrata Roy of the Raman Research Institute and Sanchayeeta Borthakur of Arizona State University, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Key Takeaways
- Jets from supermassive black holes make gas glow along their path deep into the circumgalactic medium, hundreds of thousands of light-years out
- The signal only appeared when astronomers stacked hundreds of galaxies and measured along the jet direction
- Heated, stirred-up gas struggles to cool and fall inward, which can slow a galaxy's star formation
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