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Pair of huge plasma jets spotted blasting out of gigantic black hole

Streams are the largest ever seen, measuring 23m light years and with combined power of trillions of suns

The fierce, narrow streams emerge from the top and bottom of the supermassive black hole and have a combined power output equivalent to trillions of suns. Porphyrion was spotted by Europe’s Low-Frequency Array (Lofar) telescope during a sky survey that uncovered more than 10,000 giant black hole jets. Having spotted Porphyrion, the researchers, including Martin Hardcastle, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Hertfordshire, used the Giant Metrewave radio telescope in India and the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii to locate it within a galaxy 10 times more massive than the Milky Way and about 7.5bn light years from Earth.

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