Astronomers discover ultrapowerful black hole jet as bright as 10 trillion suns lit by Big Bang's afterglow

[Admin]

"It's like looking for candlelight in close vicinity to a flashlight that's blazing toward us."

Astronomers discover ultrapowerful black hole jet as bright as 10 trillion suns lit by Big Bang's afterglow : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

This claim of "lit by Big Bang's afterglow" seems pretty far fetched.

"Back when these jets formed, the CMB was far denser than it is today, filling space with a sea of low-energy photons. As electrons in the jets raced outward at near light speed, they slammed into these CMB photons, boosting them into the X-ray range detectable by Chandra, according to the new study."

Not clear what "far denser" means. The CMBR photons that were passing those jets 11.7 billion years ago where smaller, shorter wavelength photons. By the time they get to us here on Earth, they have stretched by cosmic expansion to lower frequency microwaves. But, they were not that much higher frequency at those jets, compared to what they were when they were emitted by cooling hydrogen as the CMBR 14.7 billion years ago.

And, as to what "slammed into" what: those photons were going a the speed of light, no matter what their energy level was, while the electrons in the jets were going at least a bit slower.

So, here is the question: We see other back hole jets shining in all sorts of wavelengths at other distances, so why is it thought that these need the CMBR to generate the observed x-rays? Why couldn't those x-rays have been generated by the electrons slamming into neutral gases around the galaxy, which is what I think I have read about other relativistic jets emanating from other black holes?