Most distant cosmic jet discovered 13 billion light-years away

CNN — It has taken 13 billion years for the light from the powerful jets of a distant object to reach us. Clues of the early universe “The black hole is eating up matter very rapidly, growing in mass at one of the highest rates ever observed,” said study author Chiara Mazzucchelli, astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, in a statement. “I find it very exciting to discover ‘new’ black holes for the first time, and to provide one more building block to understand the primordial Universe, where we come from, and ultimately ourselves,” Mazzucchelli said. “Jets have a role in regulating star formation and the growth of their host galaxies, so this discovery is valuable to understanding these processes in the early universe,” said study author Chris Carilli, chief scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in a statement. “The jets at that time also propelled atoms and magnetic fields into what had been pristine space between the galaxies.” Multiple telescopes and observatories, including the Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii all contributed to the discovery of the quasar and its jets.