NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected a powerful jet emitted by a distant black hole that has been illuminated by the afterglow of the Big Bang itself.
According to a press release issued by the observatory on June 9, astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Array (VLA) belonging to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) to study this black hole and its powerful jet.
The jet appeared at the cosmic “noon,” approximately 3 billion years after the birth of the universe. During this period, the growth rate of most galaxies and supermassive black holes was faster than at any other time in cosmic history.
Astronomers can use this jet to explore how black holes during this critical period of cosmic history helped shape the surrounding environment.
Jaya Maithil, an astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics leading the research, stated, “We found that during this stage in the universe, some black holes may be more powerful than we had imagined.”
Maithil and colleagues subsequently discovered and confirmed the existence of two different black holes with jets extending over 300,000 light-years. The distances of these black holes from Earth are approximately 11.6 billion and 11.7 billion light-years, respectively.
One of the authors of the study, Dan Schwartz from the same center, noted that despite the great distance and proximity to bright quasars, the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s unparalleled X-ray resolution allows them to detect these jets.
Schwartz explained, “These X-rays are cosmic microwave photons amplified by electrons accelerated by supermassive black holes a million times.”
When electrons in the jet escape the black hole, they pass through the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation (the thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang) and collide with photons producing microwaves.
During that time, the CMB was much denser than it is now. These collisions elevate the energy of the photons to the X-ray range detectable by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Researchers also used VLA to further understand the characteristics of these jets. While the X-ray jets detected by Chandra are consistent with the overall radio emissions observed by VLA, there is no continuous radio jet matching the length of the X-ray jet.
This discrepancy makes sense as the lifespan of electrons producing radio waves is shorter than those interacting with the CMB to produce X-rays, leading to an expectation of enhanced X-ray radiation, but not necessarily enhanced radio radiation.
By combining X-ray and radio data, researchers calculated that the speed of one jet (designated as J1405+0415) ranges from 95% to 99% of the speed of light, and the speed of the other jet (J1610+1811) ranges from 92% to 98% of the speed of light.
Another report author, Aneta Siemiginowska, also from the same center, stated, “The speed of these jets is so fast that they are breaking the absolute speed limit of physics—the speed of light.”
In addition to the speeds of these two jets, Maithil and her team also measured their magnetic fields and found them to be typical for jets producing X-rays by interacting with the CMB.
They also calculated the orientation of the jets using X-ray and radio data, and concluded that these two jets are roughly 10 degrees off from the direction of Earth.