Astronomers discover Largest-Ever Stream of Superheated Gas erupting from Distant Galaxy
Table of Contents
A groundbreaking discovery has revealed the largest stream of superheated gas ever observed, emanating from the galaxy VV 340a. The findings,published in the journal Science,offer unprecedented insight into the powerful forces at play in the universe and the dramatic impact of supermassive black holes on galactic evolution.
Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers detected vast clouds of extremely hot gas erupting from both sides of VV 340a. These glowing structures, known as nebulae, stretch at least three kiloparsecs in length – roughly 19 trillion miles each – and are driven by intense activity around a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core. For context, the entire disk of VV 340a measures only about three kiloparsecs in thickness.
“In other galaxies, this type of highly energized gas is almost always confined to several tens of parsecs from a galaxy’s black hole, and our discovery exceeds what is typically seen by a factor of 30 or more,” explained a lead researcher from the University of California, irvine.
Powerful Black Hole jets Revealed
Complementing the JWST observations, radio data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array near San agustin, New mexico, revealed a pair of massive plasma jets emerging from opposite sides of the galaxy. These jets form when gas falling into a supermassive black hole reaches extreme temperatures
“The fact that we see these jets and this coronal gas so extended is really remarkable,” said a senior co-author, formerly of UC Irvine and now at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. “We expected JWST to open up the wavelength window where these tools for probing active supermassive black holes would be available to us, but we had not expected to see such highly collimated and extended emission in the first object we looked at. It was a nice surprise.”
Multiple Telescopes Reveal a Violent History
The complete picture of the jets and coronal gas emerged through the combined data from several observatories. Observations from the keck II Telescope in Hawaii uncovered cooler gas extending up to 15 kiloparsecs from the black hole, representing a “fossil record” of earlier jet activity – leftover debris from previous gas expulsions. .
Why the James Webb Space Telescope Was essential
The JWST’s ability to detect the coronal gas was crucial. Orbiting the sun about one million miles from Earth, the telescope observes the universe in infrared light, allowing it to penetrate the dust that obscures visible light. VV 340a contains large amounts of dust, preventing telescopes like Keck from seeing deep into its interior. Infrared light, however, passes through the dust, revealing the erupting coronal gas.
Jets That Shut Down Star Formation
The impact of the black hole jets on VV 340a is meaningful. The galaxy is losing enough gas each year to form 19 stars like our sun.”What it really is doing is significantly limiting the process of star formation in the galaxy by heating and removing star-forming gas,” the lead researcher explained.
Clues to the Milky Way’s Past and Future
Currently, no similar jet activity is observed in our own Milky Way galaxy. However, evidence suggests that our supermassive black hole experienced a feeding event approximately two million years ago – an event that early human ancestors, such as Homo erectus, may have witnessed in the night sky.
With this discovery, researchers plan to examine other galaxies for similar features, aiming to better understand how powerful black hole activity influences the long-term evolution of galaxies. “We are excited to continue exploring such never-before-seen phenomena at different physical scales of galaxies using observations from these state-of-the-art tools, and we can’t wait to see what else we will find,” the co-author concluded.
Funding for the research was provided by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
