A giant radioactive jet has found its way out of the early universe


Illustration for an article entitled Receiving a Giant Radioactive Jet from the Early Universe

Image: Spingola et al .; Bill Sexton, NRAO / AUI / NSF. (Others)

When the universe was a billion years old, it was a galaxy Accelerated radiation, radiation, fast moving jets and plasma jets in the universe. About 13 billion years later, it is visible to humans in the form of a jet blazer. The jet was recently imaged And a team of Italian astronomers analyzed. Their findings, which give an understanding of the length and speed of the jet, were recently published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Viewed by Too long baseline arrayThe design of 10 radio telescope antennas stretching from St. Croix in the Atlantic Ocean in the Pacific to Hawaii’s Mauna Kea – Blazer looks like a galactic smear of tomato sauce on a cosmic lens. What is actually captured in the wrong color image, however, is a bright-orange jet of plasma, drawing attention to us approximately and stretching about 1,600 light-years long, ignoring any terrestrial analogy in the distance.

According to Cristiana Spingola, an astronomer at the University of Bologna and lead author of a recent paper, scientists do not see as many blazers as would be expected in the early universe.

“Under different circumstances, this misunderstanding may be due to distant blazers with different properties such as the local blazer population, such as jets moving slower than what happens locally,” Spingola wrote in an email. “It simply came to our notice then. If confirmed, we would know that local and distant blazers are different animals. “

Such planes are carried out of the center of the galaxy by supermassive black holes. Black holes cut discs of objects around them, sometimes expelling jets of external material at extraordinary speeds. The centers of these galaxies, called active galactic nuclei, are all known as quarters; When the beams they emit are aimed at us, they are called blazers.

A few years ago, the blazer Was found to be Sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, transforming them from an intriguing to a fascinating source of information about the early universe. First discovered in March 2020, the recently described blazer, PSO J030947.49 + 271757.31 (kindly shortened to PSO J0309 + 27), is located in Aries, about 12.8 billion light-years away from Earth. Blazer is the brightest in radio waves and the second brightest in X-rays among people of the time when the universe was a billion years old. It’s the farthest galaxy we’ve ever seen, which makes it the oldest blazer yet.

“These properties make it an ideal object for study [active galactic nuclei] At a global distance, “Spingola wrote. “We know very little about the youth universe, so any new information is crucial to better understanding that era.”

The team found that the blazer jet light speed was advancing at three-quarters; An exceptional speed, though not the fastest, as other blazers have reported light speeds of more than 90%.

GIF: Spingola et al .; Bill Sexton, NRAO / AUI / NSF. (Others)

The beautiful string you saw is actually an image created by combining three different observations of a jet, taken at different radio frequencies, to close the structure of an invisible jet on others. All told, the image shows the blazer jet with a bright section at the bottom, simply extending upwards in black, where the main part of the blazer is located.

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