Scientists reveal 53 giant radio quasars wider than Milky way galaxy

In a groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have successfully discovered 53 new quasars powered by supermassive black holes that are blowing out jets of matter at relativistic speeds, and these jets stretch out for up to 7.2 million light-years, making them 20 to 50 times wider than the width of the Milky Way.

Primarily, Giant Radio Quasars, these monster objects were recently unveiled by Indian astronomers as part of a clutch of 369 radio quasars.

For that purpose, the data was collected by the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT), an array of 30 parabolic dishes located near Pune, India as part of the TIFR GMRT Sky Survey (TGSS).

It has been observed that the TGSS covered around 90% of the celestial sphere above Earth.

The supermassive black hole phenomenon

To power the immense energy of a quasar, a supermassive black hole must be surrounded by a dense supply of gas and dust which it can feed on.

This matter spirals around supermassive black holes in flattened cloud structures called accretion disks. These powerful tidal forces generated within this spiraling matter ultimately resulted in brightly emitted radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.

In this connection, team leader Sabyasachi Pal, an astronomer at Midnapore City College said, “Their enormous radio jets these quasars valuable for understanding both the late stages of their evolution and the intergalactic medium in which they expand, the rennous gas that confines their radio lobes millions of light years from the central black hole.”

The research team scrutinized Giant Radio Quasars and their environments. They found that approximately around at least 14% of these are colossal objects located within galaxy groupings and clusters located near intergalactic medium filaments of gas, dust, and dark matter.

The environment plays a pivotal role in shaping how these radio jets evolve. In denser regions, the jets might be agitated or slowed by the surrounding gas; conversely in less dense regions like the intergalactic medium, they can grow freely.

Scientists demonstrated that though most quasars feature twin jets, these jets are uneven in terms of length or brightness, a disparity called radio jet asymmetry.

However, asymmetry specifically tells us that these jets are struggling with an uneven cosmic environment.

Nonetheless, the research findings help to stipulate that giant quasars at greater cosmological distances seem to be more powerful as compared to those closer to the Milky Way.

In addition, it could have happened due to the quasars moving away, and the early cosmos seems to be more tumultuous with denser gas that distorted the path of these jets.