A discovery of black hole jets, which are charged ions, electrons and other particles accelerated to nearly the speed of light by magnetic fields around the black holes, has been published in the journal Nature.
The study noted that a black hole jet pair called “Porphyrion” was discovered and that it is the largest ever discovered, with a length of approximately 23 million light-years.
Using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) network, the study noted that Porphyrion is approximately equal in length to 140 Milky Ways combined end to end.
Pointing out that there may be more “megastructures” waiting to be discovered, one of the researchers, Martijn Oei, said, “The Milky Way remains like a small point in these two giant explosions.”
The previous largest black hole jet, “Alcyoneus”, was discovered by the same team in 2022 and was recorded to be about 100 Milky Way lengths.
