Scientists have traced a 3,000-light-year-long cosmic jet streaming out from the first black hole ever imaged<\/a> to its likely source point with the help of “significantly enhanced coverage” from the global Event Horizon Telescope, a new study published this week revealed.<\/p>\n The findings, published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” on Wednesday, could help pinpoint exactly from where and how black holes launch vast cosmic jets that travel at nearly the speed of light.<\/p>\n M87 is a supermassive black hole located in the Messier 87 Galaxy around 55 million light years from Earth, and is 6.5 billion times larger than the sun.<\/p>\n The first image<\/a> of M87 was released to the public in 2019, after the data was collected by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017.<\/p>\n Scientists have traced a 3,000-light-year-long cosmic jet streaming out from the first black hole ever imaged to its source point with the help of “significantly enhanced coverage” from the global Event Horizon Telescope, a new study published this week revealed.<\/span> (Hubble Telescope\/NASA)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Not only is the black hole supermassive, “it’s also active,” Dr. Padi Boyd of NASA explained in a video about the discovery of the black hole. “Just a few percent are active at any given time. Are they turning on and then turning off? That’s an idea\u2026 We know there’s very high magnetic fields that you launch a jet. And so this image is observational evidence that what we’ve been seeing for a while is actually being launched by a jet connected to that supermassive black hole at the center of M87.”\u00a0<\/p>\n M87 both sucks in surrounding gas and dust and spews out powerful jets of charged particles from its poles that form the jet stream, according to Scientific American and Space.com.<\/p>\n ‘SMOKING GUN EVIDENCE’: WHAT A ‘MONSTER’ BLACK HOLE WAS DISCOVERED DOING THAT CONCERNED SCIENTISTS<\/u><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n “This study represents an early step toward connecting theoretical ideas about jet launching with direct observations,” Saurabh, team leader of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said in a statement, according to Space.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n A first image of the M87 black hole taken by the Event Horizon Telescope and revealed in 2019.<\/span> (National Science Foundation via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He added, “Identifying where the jet may originate and how it connects to the black hole’s shadow adds a key piece to the puzzle and points toward a better understanding of how the central engine operates.”<\/p>\n The Event Horizon Telescope involves a global network of eight radio observatories that can detect radio waves from astronomical objects like galaxies and black holes that converge to create an Earth-sized telescope.\u00a0<\/p>\n The elliptical galaxy M87 is the home of several trillion stars, a supermassive black hole and a family of roughly 15,000 globular star clusters.<\/span> (NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI\/AURA); Acknowledgment: P. Cote, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, and E. Baltz, Stanford University)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Event Horizon refers to the boundary of a black hole beyond which light can\u2019t escape, according to the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n![\"Another](\"https:\/\/a57.foxnews.com\/static.foxnews.com\/foxnews.com\/content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1200\/675\/m87-black-hole-1.jpg?ve=1&tl=1\")
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