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  Galactic jets 23 million light years longSep 19, 2024 8:23 PM PDT | url
 
Caltech researchers using the European LOFAR ("LOw-Frequency ARray") radio telescope network have found jets shooting out of opposite sides of a supermassive black hole at the center of an unnamed host galaxy about 6 billion light years away that measure 23 million light years end-to-end. They named the jet structure "Porphyrion" after one of the largest giants in Greek myth (Wikipedia). "Prior to Porphyrion's discovery, the largest confirmed jet system was Alcyoneus, also named after a giant in Greek mythology. Alcyoneus, which was discovered in 2022 by the same team that found Porphyrion," says Caltech writer Whitney Clavin on SciTechDaily. 23 million light years is 140 times the width of our galaxy—Alcyoneus was a mere 16.5 million light years long.
 
The scientists estimate that the jets would have had to have been firing uninterrupted for about 1 billion years to generate the unusually long and undisturbed jets; this is something of a puzzle, because it would usually have been supposed that a system supplying enough infalling material for such massive jets would have had unstable features that would have interrupted or warped the jets at some point.
 
Caltech has a fancy video on YouTube about the jets.
 
(One of the things that inspired me to make A* was coming across the photo of galaxy Messier 87's 5000-light-year-long jet on Wikipedia—puny by these new Porphyrion standards, but mind-blowing to me at the time!).
 
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From "The Fantastic Four Meet the Mole Man!" in Fantastic Four #1, November 1961. Stan Lee script, Jack Kirby pencils, George Klein inks—with alterations probably by Sol Brodsky, Stan Goldberg colors, Artie Simek letters.
 
 
 
 
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