[HN Gopher] Biggest ever seen black hole jets; blasting plasma w...
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Biggest ever seen black hole jets; blasting plasma well beyond
their own galaxy
Author : wglb
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-09-19 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| wglb wrote:
| The referenced paper:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07879-y
| topherPedersen wrote:
| What happens to the plasma that the black hole spits out? Do they
| have any ideas?
| ziofill wrote:
| I think it just blasts off into the universe
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Panspermia?
| tejtm wrote:
| slows, cools, condenses into us sometimes
| antognini wrote:
| I studied these objects for my first research paper in grad
| school. (You can see a few images of some of the objects I
| found in Figure 3 of my paper [1]) In essence the jet blows a
| hot bubble into the gas that comprises the intracluster medium
| of the galaxy cluster. Over time synchrotron radiation causes
| the bubble to cool down and eventually (maybe on the order of a
| few 100 million to a billion years if I recall right) the
| bubble comes into thermal equilibrium with the surrounding gas.
|
| [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.3896
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| If the plasma jet is wildly larger than our entire galaxy, I
| wonder if some sort of exotic life could evolve inside the jet.
| Some sort of life that would be totally rare in the universe.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if our whole universe is some kind of
| transient aberration, if you zoom out far enough
| jadbox wrote:
| Not my field, but could the Big Bang have been a massive black
| hole that "spat" out jets of plasma that formed into new stars
| and galaxies? I call this the black hole big burp theory.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| This seems incompatible with inflation
| jadbox wrote:
| Isn't universe inflation already on shaky ground though?
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cosmic-
| inflation-...
| ziddoap wrote:
| This is very close to an idea known as "Black hole cosmology"
| -- basically the idea being that the visible universe is
| inside a black hole, leading to a sort of "nested
| multiverse".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-hole_cosmology
|
| A related theory, rather than being inside a black hole, is
| that the other side of a black hole is a "white hole". As
| matter collapses into a black hole, it is emitted from the
| white hole, creating another universe.
|
| Here's an article from 2010 that expands on the idea, though
| this is definitely not the first time (or last time) it was
| discussed, it just happens to be an easily searchable
| article.
|
| https://www.space.com/8293-universe-born-black-hole-
| theory.h...
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > I wonder if some sort of exotic life could evolve
|
| Some might say humans are exotic life that evolved.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| I thought that only hawking radiation could escape a black hole.
| Now a paper describing a vast jet of emitted plasma??
|
| The article doesn't quite clarify this point. It mentions the
| jets shooting from below and above the black holes, but does this
| mean they're emerging from their interior or being created by the
| accretion of superheated material that forms in orbit around
| black holes?
|
| The article simple states this, which seems wrong given the
| immense gravity of black holes:
|
| >When supermassive black holes become active--in other words,
| when their immense forces of gravity tug on and heat up
| surrounding material--they are thought to either emit energy in
| the form of radiation or jets.
|
| So the holes themselves emit energy jets or their accretion disks
| do? Sloppy damn phrasing and reporting, and all too common for
| science subjects.
| maxnoe wrote:
| Hawking radiation is one process, but for spinning black holes,
| especially ones with accretion disks and magnetic fields around
| them, there are two more theoretical predictions: the
| Blandford-Znajek process and the Penrose process.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet#Rotation_a...
| codeulike wrote:
| Its not coming out of the black hole itself, its more like the
| black hole has an accretion disk around it of material that is
| being sucked in. The dynamics of the huge forces and energies
| involved can cause jets to form, throwing high energy particles
| away from the black hole. The jets still represent a tiny
| fraction of the matter, most of which is still heading into the
| hole.
| njarboe wrote:
| And crazy strong and twisted magnetic fields that will heat
| things up/create large forces on charged particles.
| imranq wrote:
| The jets are 23 million light years in length! That's 140 milky
| way galaxies laid out -- these are sizes I can't even begin to
| comprehend
| njb311 wrote:
| Very exciting until they figure out the jet is just a Starlink
| satellite passing in front of the telescope.
| rookderby wrote:
| One hell of a thruster.
| klyrs wrote:
| Just think... in the presence of a constant magnetic field, this
| could be the most powerful particle collider in the visible
| universe
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I've seen stellar engines [1] show up in fiction.
|
| Has anyone done a galactic engine?
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine
| thehappypm wrote:
| I have a question about black holes, HN.
|
| Let's say you have a black hole. You fire a laser beam straight
| into it. Just by symmetry, shouldn't it blueshift on the way in,
| gain some preposterous amount of energy -- enough that it can
| escape?
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