{"id":245051,"date":"2026-10-07T21:47:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/radio-galaxy-from-12-5-billion-years-ago-may-be-most-powerful-ever-found"},"modified":"2026-10-07T21:47:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:47:39","slug":"radio-galaxy-from-12-5-billion-years-ago-may-be-most-powerful-ever-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/radio-galaxy-from-12-5-billion-years-ago-may-be-most-powerful-ever-found","title":{"rendered":"Radio galaxy from 12.5 billion years ago may be most powerful ever found"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/radio-galaxy-from-12-5-billion-years-ago-may-be-most-powerful-ever-found.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have confirmed a powerful radio galaxy from nearly 12.5 billion years ago. The source, TXS 2354+015, was originally identified as a high-redshift candidate from its characteristic drop in optical light, and follow-up spectroscopy placed it at a redshift of 4.946. Their <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2609.28632\" target=\"_blank\">paper<\/a> was posted to the <i>arXiv<\/i> preprint server on Sept. 23.<\/p>\n<p>When material falls onto a galaxy\u2019s central supermassive black hole, the resulting accretion activity can power an <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-05-universe-brightest-dark.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">active galactic nucleus (AGN)<\/a> and launch powerful relativistic jets of plasma, producing large amounts of radio waves. Such a galaxy is called a radio-loud active galactic nucleus (RLAGN). The energy that the jets carry can influence star formation in the galaxy and heat its surrounding gas.<\/p>\n<p>This \u201cAGN feedback\u201d is incorporated in simulations to correctly predict the number of galaxies in the universe. Such powerful galaxies in the early universe\u2014called high-z RLAGNs\u2014tend to mark the locations of the most massive, earliest-forming galaxies and galaxy clusters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers have confirmed a powerful radio galaxy from nearly 12.5 billion years ago. The source, TXS 2354+015, was originally identified as a high-redshift candidate from its characteristic drop in optical light, and follow-up spectroscopy placed it at a redshift of 4.946. Their paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 23. When material [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}