Black Hole With Powerful Jet Illuminated By Universe's 'Oldest Light' Spotted

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have spotted a powerful jet from a black hole situated in the distant universe that is being illuminated by the leftover glow from the Big Bang -- the oldest light in the universe. Researchers observed the black hole and its jet at a period they call "cosmic noon," which occurred about three billion years after the universe began.

The black hole is located 11.6 billion light-years from Earth, when the cosmic microwave background (CMB) was much denser than it is now. During this time, most galaxies and supermassive black holes were growing faster than at any other time during the history of the universe.

"As the electrons in the jets fly away from the black hole, they move through the sea of CMB radiation and collide with microwave photons," NASA stated, adding: "These collisions boost the energy of the photons up into the X-ray band, allowing them to be detected by Chandra even at this great distance, which is shown in the inset."

The jets extending from these black holes can extend millions of light-years in length. They are exceedingly bright because when particles approach the speed of light, they give off a tremendous amount of energy and behave in weird ways that Albert Einstein predicted.

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Two other black holes

Additionally, the researchers confirmed the existence of two different black holes with jets over 300,000 light-years long. Situated 11.6 billion and 11.7 billion light-years away, particles in one jet are moving at between 95 per cent and 99 per cent of the speed of light (called J1405+0415) and the other at between 92 per cent and 98 per cent of the speed of light (J1610+1811).

In January, scientists stumbled upon a supermassive black hole, located a whopping 12.9 billion light-years from Earth, with its jet pointing straight at us. Named J0410-0139, the black hole has a mass of about 700 million Suns and is one of the oldest of its kind that scientists have ever observed.

When one of these jets points directly at Earth, scientists call the black hole system a blazar. Notably, a jet racing at near-light speed but angled away from us can appear just as bright as a slower jet pointed directly at Earth.