Black holes suck in anything and everything that comes near them, even light cannot escape after crossing one of their event horizons, However they also produce massive outflows of plasma and one of those astrophysical jets just produced the largest megastructure ever observed.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Black holes suck in anything and everything that comes near them.
00:06Even light cannot escape after crossing one of their event horizons.
00:10However, black holes also release astrophysical jets, or massive outflows of ionized matter.
00:15Now astronomers say they have observed the result of one of these jets ejecting out into
00:19space and it's created a cosmic megastructure, the largest ever seen.
00:24This is a simulation of what that event and the resulting structure look like, and it
00:28has now been named Porphyrion, after the Greek king of giants.
00:32Experts say it spanned some 7 megaparsecs across spacetime, or the equivalent of 23
00:37million light years across.
00:39That means the supermassive black hole that created it is extremely small by comparison.
00:44For reference, if Porphyrion was shrunk down to the size of Earth, the supermassive black
00:48hole would only measure 0.2 millimeters, meaning it's the equivalent of a skin mite, producing
00:53in effect the size of our planet.
00:56Astrophysical jets are created when material entering the black hole gets accelerated along
01:00its magnetic field lines towards the poles.
01:03This results in powerful jets of plasma being jettisoned into the cosmos at nearly the speed
01:08of light.