![]() ![]() Something was preventing the gas from fully cooling. However, these clusters are not as cool as predicted and, as such, weren’t producing new stars at the expected rate. At the center of each cluster is a black hole, which goes through periods of feeding, where it gobbles up plasma from the cluster, followed by periods of explosive outburst, where it shoots out jets of plasma once it has reached its fill.īecause galaxy clusters are full of gas, early theories about them predicted that as the gas cooled, the clusters would see high rates of star formation, which need cool gas to form. The universe is dotted with galaxy clusters, collections of hundreds and even thousands of galaxies that are permeated with hot gas and dark matter. X-ray data are overlaid on top of optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (in red/orange), where the central galaxy that is likely hosting the culprit supermassive black hole is also visible. In the image below the giant cavities in the X-ray emitting intracluster medium (shown in blue, as observed by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory) have been carved out by a black hole outburst. At greater than 1,054 joules of energy, a force equivalent to about 1,038 nuclear bombs, this is the most powerful outburst reported in a distant galaxy cluster. Combining the volume and pressure of the displaced gas with the age of the two cavities, they were able to calculate the total energy of the outburst. In a recent paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ph.d candidate Calzadilla and his coauthors –MKI research scientist Matthew Bayliss and assistant professor of physics Michael McDonald- describe the outburst in galaxy cluster SPT-CLJ0528-5300, or SPT-0528 for short. In the same way you can calculate the energy of an asteroid impact by the size of its crater, Calzadilla, used the size of these cavities to figure out the power of the black hole’s outburst. ![]() As the plasma rushed out of the black hole, it pushed away material, creating two large cavities 180 degrees from each other. Even though the outburst happened billions of years ago, before our solar system had even formed, it took around 6.7 billion years for light from the galaxy cluster to travel all the way to Chandra, NASA’s X-ray emissions observatory that orbits Earth.īillions of years ago,before the birth of our Solar System in the center of a galaxy cluster far, far away (15 billion light-years, to be exact), a black hole spewed out jets of plasma. “This is an extreme case…” said Michael Calzadilla, at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI) of a massive black hole explosion in galaxy cluster SPT-0528 so powerful that it punched two holes in the cosmos. The outburst was equal to 1,038 nuclear bombs. ![]()
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