Intergalactic particle beam is longest yet found
17:29 07 December 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Stephen Battersby


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Bagchi et al. abstract

An intergalactic particle beam stretching for more than a million light years is the longest ever seen. According to the team that discovered this record breaker, it could help reveal how such jets of matter bind themselves together.

Jets are seen all over the cosmos squirting out of many different types of object, including stars that are just beginning to form. The most powerful ones come from the cores of active galaxies, where gas falling towards a giant black hole generates a mixture of heat, high-energy particles and magnetic fields. In some cases, these elements combine to spit out narrow columns of hot gas laced with high-energy particles, which drill though the galaxy and on out into space.
The latest discovery emerges from a large elliptical galaxy called CGCG 049-033, which is about 600 million light years away. ...


...The jet they saw is nearly 1.5 million light years long, twice the length of the previous record holder. If this jet sprang instead from the centre of the Milky Way, it would loom over us like a skyscraper and would stretch halfway to the Andromeda galaxy.