The Largest Electrical Current in the Universe

In 2011, an international team of four astronomers
were looking through telescope data when they found evidence of
something unusual: A jet of matter was producing an electric
current of 3 exa amps a quintillion amps! Thats about as much current as youd
find in a trillion lightning bolts. It was the largest electrical current ever
discovered in space. And this jet is shooting out of the center
of a galaxy two billion light years from Earth. The galaxy is called 3C303, and its in
the direction of the Botes constellation, and its about a thousand times dimmer than
Pluto is on an average day.

So, its pretty hard to see this galaxy. But just because its not very bright in
visible light, doesnt mean it isnt bright in other
wavelengths of light. 3C303 was first observed back in 1981, by a series of radio telescopes in New Mexico
called the Very Large Array. The team of researchers who discovered the
huge electrical current used that data, plus follow-up observations
taken in 2010 and 2011.

They published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in October
2011. The main thing they found was this record-breaking
current, but they also discovered something else: the
jet itself is huge. Its being pushed outward at least 150,000 light years from the center of the
galaxy meaning that this jet is longer than the Milky
Way, which is 100,000 light years across. A jet this powerful must be fueled by something
even more powerful: the supermassive black hole in the center
of the galaxy.

Most big, active galaxies have supermassive
black holes. And lots of these supermassive black holes have huge jets of matter shooting away from
them. The jets come from a thin, rotating disk around
the black hole, called the accretion disk, which is made of
gas, dust, and even doomed stars that got too close to
the black hole. All this stuff is stuck rotating around the
black hole, pulled in by its gravity.

Itll either rotate forever or eventually
be sucked in and never seen again. The matter in this disk is spun at such high
speeds, and the turbulence heats it to such high temperatures, that the atoms break down into charged plasma
particles. And thats what leads to a huge electrical
current in the jet. The charged particles create electric and
magnetic fields, which eventually force some of this plasma
into a column, and shoots it outward in the form of a jet.

These speeding charged particles create electrical
current. Lots of electrical current. Of all the active galaxies with active supermassive
black holes in their centers, only about 10% have been found to have jets
spewing out matter. But all of these jets will have electric currents
running through them.

But why is 3C303s current so astonishingly,
exceptionally, record-breakingly huge? Well, the amount of current that these jets
carry is related to the strength of the black holes
accretion disk. Some of these jets shoot out for millions
of years, and others fizzle out. 3C303s black hole jet is thought to be
so electrified because its black hole accretion disk is so
active that it has an unusually strong magnetic field, which creates a larger amount of electricity. The researchers pointed out in their paper
that this was a rare opportunity and the first direct measure of the strength
of a large jets electric current.

But as radio telescopes become more sensitive, we should be able to observe more bright jets
like this one plus whatever giant currents are running through
them. Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow
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Labels: CURRENT

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