Cosmic Anomaly: Massive Spiral Galaxy is Ejecting Colossal Pair of Relativistic Jets

2MASX J23453268-0449256 (J2345-0449 for short), an extremely massive, rapidly rotating, jet-launching spiral galaxy approximately 947 million light-years in the constellation of Aquarius, harbors a supermassive black hole billions of times the Sun’s mass which is powering colossal radio jets stretching 6 million light-years across. That is one of the largest known for any spiral galaxy and upends conventional wisdom of galaxy evolution, because such powerful jets are almost exclusively found in elliptical galaxies, not spirals. It also means the Milky Way could potentially create similar energetic jets in the future.

2MASX J23453268-0449256 (J2345-0449 for short), an extremely massive, rapidly rotating, jet-launching spiral galaxy approximately 947 million light-years in the constellation of Aquarius, harbors a supermassive black hole billions of times the Sun’s mass which is powering colossal radio jets stretching 6 million light-years across. That is one of the largest known for any spiral galaxy and upends conventional wisdom of galaxy evolution, because such powerful jets are almost exclusively found in elliptical galaxies, not spirals. It also means the Milky Way could potentially create similar energetic jets in the future.