Black hole jets on the scale of the cosmic web

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Oei, Martijn S. S. L.; Hardcastle, Martin J.; Timmerman, Roland; Gast, Aivin R. D. J. G. I. B.; Botteon, Andrea; Rodriguez, Antonio C.; Stern, Daniel; Calistro Rivera, Gabriela; van Weeren, Reinout J.; Roettgering, Huub J. A.; Intema, Huib T.; de Gasperin, Francesco; Djorgovski, S. G.
• 署名单位: Leiden University; Leiden University - Excl LUMC; California Institute of Technology; University of Hertfordshire; Durham University; University of Oxford; Istituto Nazionale Astrofisica (INAF); California Institute of Technology; National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA); NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); European Southern Observatory; Helmholtz Association; German Aerospace Centre (DLR)
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-4245
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07879-y
• 发表日期: 2024-09-19
• 页码: 537-541
• 关键词: radio galaxies; lofar

摘要

When sustained for megayears (refs. 1,2), high-power jets from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) become the largest galaxy-made structures in the Universe3. By pumping electrons, atomic nuclei and magnetic fields into the intergalactic medium (IGM), these energetic flows affect the distribution of matter and magnetism in the cosmic web4-6 and could have a sweeping cosmological influence if they reached far at early epochs. For the past 50 years, the known size range of black hole jet pairs ended at 4.6-5.0 Mpc (refs. 7-9), or 20-30% of a cosmic void radius in the Local Universe10. An observational lack of longer jets, as well as theoretical results11, thus suggested a growth limit at about 5 Mpc (ref. 12). Here we report observations of a radio structure spanning about 7 Mpc, or roughly 66% of a coeval cosmic void radius, apparently generated by a black hole between 4.4-0.7+0.2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${4.4}_{-0.7}<<^>>{+0.2}$$\end{document} and 6.3 Gyr after the Big Bang. The structure consists of a northern lobe, a northern jet, a core, a southern jet with an inner hotspot and a southern outer hotspot with a backflow. This system demonstrates that jets can avoid destruction by magnetohydrodynamical instabilities over cosmological distances, even at epochs when the Universe was 7 to 15-2+6\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$1{5}_{-2}<<^>>{+6}$$\end{document} times denser than it is today. How jets can retain such long-lived coherence is unknown at present. Radio images reveal distant black hole jets of cosmological length, suggesting that the environmental impact of supermassive black holes extends further in space and time than previously thought.