The above title is the verbatim from a Guardian news article that a colleague in chemistry shared. I don’t usually read the Guardian and it is not a reliable source of science news. The article is not well-written and it is missing basic important information such as where the huge plasma jets originated from, i.e. which supermassive black hole and host galaxy. According to the article, the plasma jets are the most powerful ever observed whose streams are measured to be 23 million light years from end to end. The jets were named Porphyrion after a giant in Greek mythology.
This is not a newly observed phenomenon in the universe. Such powerful jets from the center of a galaxy have been observed for a long time and they are called quasar jets, or quasars in short. Quasars are not rare. More than a million quasars have been identified. The known closest one to Earth is a Type-1 Seyfert galaxy Markarian 231 (UGC 8085) which is located about 581 million light years away from Earth in the constellation of Ursa Major. The farthest known quasar from Earth, of course, keeps being updated as observation is being improved. For now, it is QSO J0313-1806 with oldest known supermassive black hole at $(1.6\pm 0.4)\times 10^9$ solar masses, which is in the constellation of Eridanus. So how far is it? When we talk about the distance to a really distant part of the universe, there are two different ways to measure it: one is called light travel distance and the other is called proper distance. Why is that so? That is because the universe is not static but is expanding. The light travel distance to QSO J0313-1806 from Earth is 13 billion light years. What this means is that the light from QSO J0313-1806 we see on Earth was emitted 13 billion years ago. Due to the expanding of the universe, the proper distance, i.e. the distance measured by the cosmic scale ruler (figuratively speaking) is 30 billion light years away from Earth.
The source of a quasar is not necessarily a black hole but in theory it could be a white hole (A hypothetical celestial object that spits out matters. It is the counterpart of a black hole which sucks up whatever comes nearby, even light). Although many physicists doubt the existence of a white hole (It’s only a mathematical solution of Einstein’s field equations and there is no known physical reason or mechanism for its possible existence. Besides, even if a white hole is created, it would be very unstable and would quickly become a black hole), some physicists proposed that we may be able to observe one if there is any by searching for quasars.
Some observations indicated that the speed of a quasar jet appears to exceed the speed of light. Of course, if confirmed, it would shake up the foundation of Einstein’s special theory of relativity. So far, it is inconclusive so relativity is still safe. I bet my dime on the (inconclusive) findings being due to a measurement error or a statistical fluke like OPERA faster-than-light neutrino anomaly back in 2011 (it later was found to be a result of an equipment failure).
I recently wrote a paper which proposes a possibility of the non-existence of the faster-than-light under the assumption that the Big Bang created not just one universe but its twin brother with a different orientation. It is a preprint and I am still working on a revision requested by the reviewer. By the way, Einstein’s special theory of relativity does not actually prohibits the existence of the faster-than-light. For such as the hypothetical particles, tachyons, as long as particles are born with the initial velocity already exceeding the speed of light, their existence won’t contradict the relativity.
