NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has made a remarkable discovery: a black hole in the far reaches of the universe is emitting an unexpectedly powerful jet. This phenomenon is occurring during a time period known as “cosmic noon,” approximately three billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and supermassive black holes were rapidly growing.
By utilizing Chandra alongside the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers explored this black hole’s jet, which is bathed in the residual glow from the early universe. The artist’s illustration highlights a disk of material falling into a supermassive black hole, with a jet extending toward the upper right, as identified in the recent study. This black hole is located an impressive 11.6 billion light-years from Earth, when the cosmic microwave background (CMB)—the afterglow of the Big Bang—was significantly denser than it is today.
As the electrons in the jets escape the black hole, they interact with the abundant CMB radiation, causing collisions that energize the photons and push them into the X-ray spectrum. This energy transformation allows Chandra to detect the jets, even across vast cosmic distances.
Researchers successfully identified and confirmed the presence of two distinct black holes, each featuring jets that stretch over 300,000 light-years. Located 11.6 billion and 11.7 billion light-years from Earth respectively, these black holes have jets with particles traveling at astonishing speeds—between 95% and 99% of the speed of light for J1405+0415, and between 92% and 98% for J1610+1811. Notably, J1610+1811’s jet is particularly potent, carrying nearly half as much energy as the intense light emitted from the hot gas surrounding the black hole.
Chandra’s exceptional X-ray vision enabled the detection of these jets despite their distance and proximity to the bright supermassive black holes, known as quasars. During the era of cosmic noon, the density of the CMB significantly enhanced the energy transfers that facilitated this discovery.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity explains how jets moving close to light speed exhibit an apparent brightening effect. Jets directed toward Earth appear more luminous than those flowing away, which can often lead to varied interpretations of brightness based on their relative speeds and angles. To address this challenge, researchers developed a new statistical method that accounts for the inherent bias toward detecting jets aimed at Earth. Their approach integrates a modified probability distribution that reflects how different angles of jets are observed in astrophysical surveys.
By simulating jet behaviors and applying this revised distribution, they determined the probable viewing angles: about 9 degrees for J1405+0415 and 11 degrees for J1610+1811.
These findings were presented by Jaya Maithil from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian during the 246th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Anchorage, Alaska, and will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The Chandra program is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, while the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory oversees scientific operations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations in Burlington, Massachusetts.
For more information about the Chandra X-ray Observatory, you can visit their official sites: https://www.nasa.gov/chandra and https://chandra.si.edu.