Black hole jets reach far beyond galaxies' visible edges, potentially deciding their fate
Galaxies are enormous and hold hundreds of billions of stars. These stars form from cold, dense gas. Every large galaxy, including the Milky Way, is wrapped in a huge envelope of gas called the circumgalactic medium, or CGM. This reservoir of raw material stretches 10–20 times the size of the visible portion of the galaxy.
Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies may be influencing their host galaxies' growth and evolution by blasting jets of heated plasma far beyond the visible edges of the galaxy, according to a new study. These jets can disrupt the gas that galaxies need to continue forming stars, potentially deciding the fate of the galaxy itself.
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