Picture of the bigger shockwave entrance, and a picture of the Milky Means for scale. Credit score: Francesco de Gasperin, SARAO
Astronomers have a factor for large explosions and collisions, and it all the time looks as if they're attempting to one-up themselves find a much bigger, brighter one. There’s a brand new entrant to that class – an occasion so large it created a burst of particles over 1 billion years in the past that's nonetheless seen as we speak and is 60 occasions greater than the whole Milky Means.
That shockwave was created by the merger of two galaxy clusters to create a supercluster often called Abell 3667. This was some of the energetic occasions within the universe for the reason that Massive Bang, in line with calculations by Professor Francesco de Gasperin and his time from the College of Hamburg and INAF. When it occurred over 200 million years in the past, it shot out a wave of electrons, much like how a particle accelerator would. All these years later, these particles are nonetheless touring at Mach 2.5 (1500 km / s), and once they go by way of magnetic fields, they emit radio waves.
Image of galaxy cluster Abell 3667, the place the white shade within the middle is a concatenation of 550 distinct galaxies, however the pink buildings symbolize the shockwaves shaped through the creation of this supercluster. Credit score: Francesco de Gasperin, SARAO
These radio waves are what Dr. de Gasperin and his colleagues noticed utilizing a brand new telescope array in South Africa often called MeerKAT. Radio indicators alone weren’t sufficient to characterize the shockwave itself, although – the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory additionally spent a while targeted on Abell 3667.
The outcomes of all these observations is a greater understanding of the physics of the merger of those galaxy clusters, which had been “rather more advanced than we initially thought,” stated Dr. de Gasperin. The shockwaves themselves appear like “filaments that hint the placement of big magnetic subject strains.” What is evident from the images is that, even when scientists are merely on the lookout for large collisions, the ensuing radio pictures may be awe-inspiring in themselves.
Initially printed on Universe Immediately.
For extra on this discovery, see A Large Cosmic Shock Wave That Extends for six.5 Million Mild Years.
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