Astronomers have recorded one of the most powerful ultrafast gas outflows ever observed emanating from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole in a distant quasar. Observations revealed two distinct layers of wind traveling at 10 and 30 percent of the speed of light.
Led by Giorgio Lanzuisi of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF, Bologna), a team working within the WISSHFUL program utilized the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR X-ray observatories. Their target was the quasar WISSH13 at a redshift of z = 3.294, an object seen as it appeared roughly two billion years after the Big Bang. The central black hole possesses a mass approximately two billion times that of the Sun, with a luminosity three times higher than expected for such a massive object.
The spectrum, derived from October 2024 data and archival 2017 observations, revealed two distinct absorption lines. Modeling indicates these correspond to two components of a single outflow: a stable, slower layer and a faster one that appears episodically. Together, they eject approximately 20 solar masses of material per year, making this one of the most massive and powerful UFOs known to date, as well as the most distant such outflow identified in a non-lensed quasar.
The wind's structure aligns with theoretical predictions, featuring a high-velocity "spine" launched from the innermost regions of the accretion disk surrounded by a slower "sheath" originating further from the black hole. Despite its immense power, the outflow follows the same scaling relationships observed in closer active galaxies.
The findings are detailed in a preprint published on arXiv on June 3, 2026 (arXiv:2606.05312), and are currently undergoing minor revisions for the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Future missions, such as NewAthena, are expected to enable the detection of similar winds in even more remote objects.
