Porphyrion: The Largest Black Hole Jets Ever Discovered
Now this will really twist your mind
Astronomers have uncovered the largest black hole jets ever seen, christened “Porphyrion” after a giant from Greek mythology—and the name fits. These colossal twin jets span an almost unbelievable 23 million light-years, the same as placing 140 Milky Way galaxies end to end across the cosmos.
The jets erupt from a supermassive black hole inside a galaxy located 7.5 billion light-years from Earth. That galaxy is roughly ten times more massive than the Milky Way, and the jets began forming when the universe was just 6.3 billion years old, making them truly ancient structures by cosmic standards.
Porphyrion is staggeringly powerful. Its jets release trillions of times more energy than the Sun emits every second, blasting far beyond their home galaxy and deep into the cosmic web—the immense filamentary network that connects galaxies across the universe.
Astronomers think jets like these may have profoundly shaped cosmic history, potentially slowing star formation, flinging huge amounts of matter and energy into intergalactic space, and even magnetizing the regions between galaxies, altering the environment on the largest scales.
The discovery was made using the LOFAR radio telescope, which has already identified over 10,000 similar jet systems. Yet Porphyrion dwarfs them all, surpassing even the former record-holder Alcyoneus. These findings challenge the long-held idea that such gigantic jets are rare, opening new avenues for understanding how black holes influenced galaxy growth—and the evolution of the early universe itself.
RESEARCH PAPER:
Martijn S. S. L. Oei et al., “Black hole jets on the scale of the cosmic web”, Nature (2024)
