Jets from supermassive black holes reach far beyond the visible edges of galaxies and may decide whether galaxies keep forming stars, a new study says. The research was led by Arizona State University and the Raman Research Institute.

The team searched for a faint glow of ionized hydrogen in the gas around galaxies, using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and the LOFAR radio survey. They combined observations from hundreds of galaxies with active jets.

The glow appeared strongly along the direction of each galaxy’s radio jets, like a focused beam rather than a lamp lighting a room. It was brightest in two places: where the jet first hits the surrounding gas and much farther out at the gas cloud’s edge.

‘What excites me most is the scale of the connection,’ said assistant professor Namrata Roy. A black hole is tiny next to its galaxy, yet its jets can reach hundreds of thousands of light-years.

The findings, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggest jets heat and ionize gas so it cannot cool into new stars. Archynetys reports the story is trending across eight outlets.