Science: Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have observed the oldest known powerful “galaxy-sized” wind flowing from a supermassive black hole-powered quasar. The powerful wind is pushing gas and dust out of its galaxy at incredible speeds, stunting the birth of stars in its host galaxy. The quasar, named J1007+2115, is so distant that it is seen just 700 million years after the Big Bang — when the 13.8-billion-year-old universe was about 5% of its current age. Although this makes J1007+2115 the third-oldest quasar ever observed, it is the first ever to have a powerful, galaxy-sized wind blowing from it.
The outflows from this quasar aren’t just notable for their antiquity, however. The winds from J1007+2115 extend out to 7,500 light-years from the black hole at their source, which is equivalent to about 25 solar systems located next to each other. The researchers said the amount of matter they transfer each year is equivalent to 300 Suns, moving at a speed equivalent to 6,000 times the speed of light. “This is the third oldest and third most distant quasar known today to be powered by an accreting supermassive black hole,” discovery team leader and University of Arizona researcher Weizhe Liu told Space.com. “To the best of our knowledge, this galaxy-scale quasar-driven wind is the oldest wind currently known.”
The winds from this central supermassive black hole may even be so powerful that they can “kill” the host galaxy at speeds up to 6,000 times faster than the speed of sound, destroying the matter needed to give birth to new stars. All large galaxies are thought to have a supermassive black hole at their center, with a mass ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun. But not all of these black holes power quasars, the brightest sources of light in the universe.
