"This distortion works as a 'natural telescope' to enable a detailed view of distant objects," Takeo Minezaki, associate professor at the University of Tokyo and co-author of the new paper, said in a
press release.
For the study, the researchers used ALMA’s already extraordinary vision and gravitational lensing to gather incredibly detailed observations of the distant galaxy. This allowed the team to measure the violent motions of the galaxy’s gas clouds. Based on their analysis, they say some of the clouds are moving with speeds upward of 1.3 million miles per hour (2.1 million km/h). That’s obviously fast, but more importantly, such a snapshot reveals how the ancient galaxy was behaving in the early universe.
"We are perhaps witnessing the very early phase of jet evolution in the galaxy," said Satoki Matsushita, a research fellow at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, in a press release.
Studying how these jets work can help astronomers piece together how galaxies in the ancient universe evolved over time. And because supermassive black holes stir up the centers of galaxies, they likely also play a major role in star formation. In nearby galaxies, powerful jets can entirely blow away gas clouds, robbing the environment of the material to form stars. But whether or not this is also true for early galaxies remains unsolved.
Fortunately, studies like this will slowly help us piece together exactly what role black hole jets play in the broader evolution of galaxies.