A 200,000-Light-Year Jet Ignites New Questions About the Early Cosmos

Astronomers have discovered a massive, double-lobed radio jet stretching 200,000 light-years from a quasar that existed when the Universe was just 1.2 billion years old.

This groundbreaking find, made using multiple telescopes including LOFAR and Gemini North, challenges previous assumptions about early quasars. Despite its immense power, the quasar’s black hole is relatively small, suggesting that extreme mass isn’t necessarily required to generate such enormous jets. The discovery also sheds light on why these early jets have been so difficult to detect, due to interference from the cosmic microwave background. With this new insight, scientists are now one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the early Universe.

Massive Black Holes and Luminous Quasars

Decades of astronomical observations have shown that most galaxies harbor massive black holes at their centers. As gas and dust fall into these black holes, friction releases immense energy, creating luminous galactic cores known as quasars. These quasars can produce powerful jets of energetic matter, which can be detected across vast distances using radio telescopes. While such jets are relatively common in nearby galaxies, they have remained elusive in the distant, early Universe — until now.

Astronomers have now discovered a two-lobed radio jet stretching at least 200,000 light-years — twice the width of the Milky Way — the largest ever detected from this early period in cosmic history. The jet was first identified using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), an international network of radio telescopes across Europe.

Unveiling the Quasar with Advanced Telescopes

Follow-up observations in the near-infrared with the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS), and in the optical with the Hobby Eberly Telescope, were obtained to paint a complete picture of the radio jet and the quasar producing it. These findings are crucial to gaining more insight into the timing and mechanisms behind the formation of the first large-scale jets in our Universe.

GNIRS is mounted on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRlab.

Understanding the Formation of Early Jets

“We were searching for quasars with strong radio jets in the early Universe, which helps us understand how and when the first jets are formed and how they impact the evolution of galaxies,” says Anniek Gloudemans, postdoctoral research fellow at NOIRLab and lead author of the paper presenting these results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Determining the properties of the quasar, such as its mass and the rate at which it is consuming matter, is necessary for understanding its formation history. To measure these parameters the team looked for a specific wavelength of light emitted by quasars known as the MgII (magnesium) broad emission line. Normally, this signal appears in the ultraviolet wavelength range. However, owing to the expansion of the Universe, which causes the light emitted by the quasar to be ‘stretched’ to longer wavelengths, the magnesium signal arrives at Earth in the near-infrared wavelength range, where it is detectable with GNIRS.

A Surprisingly Small Yet Powerful Quasar

The quasar, named J1601+3102, formed when the Universe was less than 1.2 billion years old — just 9% of its current age. While quasars can have masses billions of times greater than that of our Sun, this one is on the small side, weighing in at 450 million times the mass of the Sun. The double-sided jets are asymmetrical both in brightness and the distance they stretch from the quasar, indicating an extreme environment may be affecting them.

“Interestingly, the quasar powering this massive radio jet does not have an extreme black hole mass compared to other quasars,” says Gloudemans. “This seems to indicate that you don’t necessarily need an exceptionally massive black hole or accretion rate to generate such powerful jets in the early Universe.”

The Cosmic Microwave Background and Hidden Jets

The previous dearth of large radio jets in the early Universe has been attributed to noise from the cosmic microwave background — the ever-present fog of microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. This persistent background radiation normally diminishes the radio light of such distant objects.

“It’s only because this object is so extreme that we can observe it from Earth, even though it’s really far away,” says Gloudemans. “This object shows what we can discover by combining the power of multiple telescopes that operate at different wavelengths.”

“When we started looking at this object we were expecting the southern jet to just be an unrelated nearby source, and for most of it to be small. That made it quite surprising when the LOFAR image revealed large, detailed radio structures,” says Frits Sweijen, postdoctoral research associate at Durham University and co-author of the paper. “The nature of this distant source makes it difficult to detect at higher radio frequencies, demonstrating the power of LOFAR on its own and its synergies with other instruments.”

The Ongoing Mystery of Early Quasars

Scientists still have a multitude of questions about how radio-bright quasars like J1601+3102 differ from other quasars. It remains unclear what circumstances are necessary to create such powerful radio jets, or when the first radio jets in the Universe formed. Thanks to the collaborative power of Gemini North, LOFAR and the Hobby Eberly Telescope, we are one step closer to understanding the enigmatic early Universe.

Notes

1. An example of a monster radio jet found in the nearby Universe is the 23 million-light-year-long jet, named Porphyrion, which was observed 6.3 billion years after the Big Bang.

Reference: “Monster Radio Jet (>66 kpc) Observed in Quasar at z  ∼​​​​​ 5” by Anniek J. Gloudemans, Frits Sweijen, Leah K. Morabito, Emanuele Paolo Farina, Kenneth J. Duncan, Yuichi Harikane, Huub J. A. Röttgering, Aayush Saxena and Jan-Torge Schindler, 6 February 2025, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad9609

The team is composed of Anniek J. Gloudemans (NSF NOIRLab, International Gemini Observatory), Frits Sweijen (Durham University), Leah K. Morabito (Durham University), Emanuele Paolo Farina (NSF NOIRLab, International Gemini Observatory), Kenneth J. Duncan (Royal Observatory, Edinburgh), Yuichi Harikane (University of Tokyo), Huub J. A. Röttgering (Leiden University), Aayush Saxena (University of Oxford, Durham University), and Jan-Torge Schindler (University of Hamburg).

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