Astounding Discovery: Awe-Inspiring Black Hole Jets 7.5 Billion Light Years Away Unveiled by GMRT
An international team of astronomers has leveraged the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), situated 80 km from Pune, to identify the largest pair of plasma jets ever recorded emanating from a supermassive black hole. These jets span an astounding 23 million light years, surpassing the size of the Milky Way by over a hundred times. This groundbreaking discovery has been published in the prestigious journal, Nature.
Prof. Yogesh Wadadekar of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) highlighted the significance of this discovery, emphasizing that the GMRT telescope in Khodad was instrumental. According to Wadadekar, these giant jets, originating from a supermassive black hole at a galaxy’s core, can be observed with radio telescopes. However, such extensive jets are exceptionally rare, marking this discovery as a record-breaking find.
To accurately measure these jets, researchers required a powerful radio telescope capable of tracing the jets back to their source galaxy, a task adeptly handled by the GMRT. Once the host galaxy was identified, the Keck I optical telescope in Hawaii was used to ascertain the distance of the jets. Martijn Oei, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and the lead author of the paper, stressed the critical role of high-resolution GMRT observations in pinpointing the host galaxy, essential for recognizing the vast expanse of the jet structure.
Dubbed Porphyrion, reminiscent of a giant from Greek mythology, this colossal structure dates back to when the universe was 6.3 billion years old. The researchers, in their Nature publication, noted that without the precise data from GMRT, linking the jets to their optical host galaxy would have been unfeasible. This discovery adds to a series of significant contributions by the GMRT to the study of supermassive black hole jets over the last two decades.
Original Story https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/gmrt-helps-discover-longest-ever-black-hole-jets-9608379/
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