Comment by imranq

Comment by imranq 2 months ago

23 replies

The jets are 23 million light years in length! That's 140 milky way galaxies laid out -- these are sizes I can't even begin to comprehend

takinola 2 months ago

Imagine the amount of energy required to create a jet that large! The scales are so big, it makes me wonder if there isn’t an upper limit to energy density. How much energy can be in one spot before you inadvertently create a Big Bang?

  • JumpCrisscross 2 months ago

    > it makes me wonder if there isn’t an upper limit to energy density

    Yes, in a sense. The point at which the energy bends space-time into a black hole.

    • doctorwho42 2 months ago

      Actually, in theory there is one place denser but our models show it can never happen.

      The moment right after the big bang. As energy can never be created nor destroyed, all the energy in the universe was practically in one point in space-time a femtosecond after the big bang.

      • sa1 2 months ago

        This is a misunderstanding. All the energy in our « observable » universe was compressed in that small size. We do not have any estimates of the size of the actual universe now, nor at a time shortly after Big Bang. For all we know, the universe might be infinite, both now and back then.

      • monero-xmr 2 months ago

        My layman understanding is that we don't have the theories or math to try and understand this so it's just a black box that we pretend to understand

      • dyauspitr 2 months ago

        The whole concept of the Big Bang is a mind warp. The whole explosion must have happened in some… space-time thing to begin with. What was that immense point of matter and energy in? What was “around” it? We’ll never know.

      • chasil 2 months ago

        At that moment, why didn't the entire [mass of the] universe collapse into a black hole?

        Perhaps gravity evolved.

arbuge 2 months ago

For comparison that's almost 10 times the distance to the Andromeda galaxy (2.5m ly).

ZoomZoomZoom 2 months ago

Imagine a one meter long jet. Congratulations, you've begun to comprehend it and now are at 1/(2.176 × 1023) of the total length.

  • wruza 2 months ago

    10^23 is actually easy to comprehend, because it’s close to the amount of h2o molecules in a syringe. Just that many meters.