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Summary
A newfound black hole has been caught in the act of releasing a prodigious amount of energy from the most powerful pair of jets ever seen from such a cosmic object. But the real surprise is what is created by those jets. Astronomers noticed that the strong jets from this specific type of black hole, called a microquasar, are slamming into the surrounding interstellar gas, heating it and creating a massive bubble of hot gas that is 1,000 light-years across. Microquasars are black holes that are also known as X-ray binaries, with jets of high-speed particles being a chief characteristic. Some microquasars have been known to produce gas bubbles due to the interaction of the jets with the surrounding interstellar medium, but these bubbles are typically relatively small less than 10 light-years across. This newly observed gas bubble is twice as large and tens of times more powerful than other known microquasars.
