Science: Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Space Telescope have observed a giant black hole jet colliding with an unknown object in space. Astronomers have seen black hole jets colliding with cosmic objects before, but this one appears to be different from these events.
The discovery came in the form of a strange trail in the bright jet emanating from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A), located about 12 million light-years from Earth. The new research also revealed that at multiple points along its galaxy-scale length, the jet of high-energy particles from this black hole is traveling close to the speed of light.
Although the jet from Cen A’s supermassive black hole has been well studied before, the Chandra data revealed something new and unexpected about this outflow. The team found that the emission connects to a bright V-shaped source of X-rays in Cen A. This source is labeled “C4,” and it’s located close to the black hole jet’s point of origin.
According to NASA, the “arms” of this V-shaped emission are about 700 light-years long. For reference, that’s about 175 times longer than the distance between the sun and the solar system’s closest star, Proxima Centauri.
Jets from supermassive black holes come not from the black holes themselves but from their surroundings. These cosmic titans suggest that’s because they’re marked by a boundary called the “event horizon,” over which even light doesn’t move fast enough to escape. Nothing with mass can move as fast as light, which means nothing can escape a black hole.
Some black holes are surrounded by flattened clouds of gas and dust called “accretion disks” that slowly nourish them. However, not all of this matter is destined to fall into the central black hole’s mouth, because black holes are “dirty eaters.”
This is because powerful magnetic fields around a black hole can drive matter to its poles. From there, these particles are accelerated to high speeds and high energies and blasted out as astronomical jets that can extend for millions of light-years.
