Astronomers Just Spotted Something Freaky In A Galactic Cluster

Astronomers Just Spotted Something Freaky In A Galactic Cluster

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One theory says that a single supermassive black hole is responsible for forming these bubbles, which are oriented perpendicularly in pairs.

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Astronomers Just Spotted Something Freaky In A Galactic Cluster

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has helped discover four giant bubbles at the center of a galactic cluster called RBS 797, with the trusty Hubble Space Telescope serving as the medium of yet another intriguing space mystery. Also known as X-Ray bubbles, these giant cosmic entities are not rare. In fact, just a year ago, scientists spotted massive gas structures extending above and below the galactic disc, dangling like bubbles in the Milky Way galaxy.

The discovery resulted from the first all-sky survey performed by the eROSITA X-ray telescope. As for the cause behind their formation, scientists postulate that a massive explosion at the galactic center may have pushed the gas enveloped around it and gave it a bubble-like appearance when observed under the X-ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Earlier this year, Harvard scientists reported the discovery of a massive shell about 500 light-years across that connects the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds like a giant sphere.

The latest discovery, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, documents four giant cavities or bubbles at the center of a galactic cluster. The team behind the latest research has zeroed down on two likely scenarios for forming this quartet of cavities. The first hypothesis highlights eruptions in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole in one of the central galaxies of a cluster. The most plausible formation scenario is that once the explosion happens, matter flies away in opposite directions, blowing cavities in the gas envelope around it. In the case of the RBS 797 galactic cluster, two explosions are said to have happened, releasing accelerated jets of matter in a direction perpendicular to each other. Just over a month ago, another research published in Nature tried to unravel how a stream of plasma and energy is ejected at near light-speed by a black hole.

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Another Day, Another Black Hole Mystery

Coming back to the bubbles in the RBS 797 cluster, scientists say a pair of supermassive black holes are responsible for the cosmic anomaly. “While we think supermassive black holes can form binary systems, it is extremely rare that both of them are observed in an active phase – in this sense, the discovery of two close active black holes inflating cavities in RBS 797 is extraordinary,” opined one of the co-authors of the research titled “The deepest Chandra view of RBS 797: evidence for two pairs of equidistant X-ray cavities.” For the unaware, galactic clusters are one of the largest cosmic bodies in the universe in which hundreds and thousands of galaxies are suspended in a medium of hot gas and dark matter.

But there is another wild hypothesis behind the formation of these four cavities in the RBS 797 galactic cluster. The second theory says that a single supermassive black hole is responsible for creating all four cavities. The perpendicular orientation of each pair is because the jets of matter quickly flip their direction. While it might sound ludicrous at first, it is not the only mind-blowing discovery of recent years. Just earlier this month, a Hubble analysis revealed that there’s a ‘leak’ within the black hole at the center of the Milky Way and that it is not exactly dormant, as it occasionally spews jets of particles and radiation like human burping after a meal.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/hubble-space-telescope-discovery-black-hole-mystery/

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