14 DAY TRIAL // Intergalactic matter jet streams can be found all over the universe, and usually span as long as hundreds of thousand light years in space. However, astronomers studying an elliptical galaxy found evidence of a jet stream spanning more than a million light years from its center. This record breaking structure could reveal how such jets of matter hold themselves together.
These powerful emissions of matter originate in different cosmic objects but are most common in the cores of active galactic nuclei, as accreting matter drawn towards the supermassive black holes falls into them, creating a mix of super heated gas, extremely energetic particles and magnetic fields, which are ejected from the general area of the poles in the form of narrow columns of gas saturated with elementary particles traveling through the galaxy and out of it into the immensity of space.
Observations of CGCG 049-933, an elliptic galaxy situated more that six hundred million light years away revealed similar jet stream emission during a radio search using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope near Pune and the 100-meter Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany, in a study conducted by Joydeep Bagchi from the Pune University in Maharashtra, India.
Data collected by the two telescopes, indicates that the jet stream is about 1.5 million light years long which is more than twice the length of the previous record holder. In contrast with the relative distances in the local group, if such matter jet stream had originated in the core of our own galaxy, it would appear somehow like a skyscraper spanning more than half the distance to our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.
Furthermore, it seems that this particular jet stream presents a peculiar property, as unlike other jet streams that are usually matched in pairs of equal lengths, in this case one of the jets appears to be much longer than its counterpart, pointing in the other direction. However, this might have a fairly simple explanation as the shorter jet stream points away from us, thus light would need more time to travel before reaching Earth.
Radio scans of the particle jet streams also appear to be strongly polarised, meaning that the magnetic field generated is rather powerful and wraps strongly around them in a regular pattern, said Marita Krause of the University of Bonn Germany.
This could be the effect of the magnetic field acting as a containing sheath that is generated by the high-pressure gas at the same time preventing it from falling apart. These containment fields have also been observed in similar jet streams, though their intensity appears to be far weaker than the recently discovered one. Further study of the jet streams and their magnetic companion are scheduled to be carried with the Very Large Array radio observatory in New Mexico, U.S.