Astronomers have detected massive X-ray jets extending nearly 300,000 light-years from two ancient supermassive black holes — almost three times the diameter of the Milky Way. The discovery, announced at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting in Alaska on June 9, offers rare insight into black hole activity during the universe’s formative years.
Led by Dr. Jaya Maithil of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the research team used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the VLA to uncover these high-energy jets from quasars located about 11.6 to 11.7 billion light-years away. The findings reveal how these black holes influenced the galaxies they inhabited when the universe was just 3 billion years old.
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“These quasars are like cosmic time capsules,” said Dr. Maithil, highlighting how their intense energy output likely shaped early galactic environments. One jet, observed from quasar J1610+1811, appears in a newly released Chandra image as a faint but long purple streak extending from a bright central core.
The jets remain visible due to a process called inverse Compton scattering — where electrons in the jets collide with cosmic microwave background radiation and boost it to X-ray levels. This interaction allows scientists to detect these structures across immense cosmic distances and time.
The discovery underscores the immense power of black holes in the early universe and how they may have driven galactic evolution on colossal scales.
