Researchers have made an incredible discovery. For Normalos, the record is beyond imagination. Even the astronomers doubted.
- Researchers register breathtaking results.
- The largest explosion known to date in the universe has been recorded.
- Astronomers were initially skeptical of “the size of the outbreak”.
We want to understand and explain everything, but sometimes even the Pioneer “human” reaches its limits. After all, our imagination is finite, but the universe may not. Strange things happen there, which even the smartest minds face with unsolvable puzzles. Another such mystery has now been registered by researchers in a galaxy far away. The starting point is a supermassive black hole in the galaxy cluster Ophiuchus some 390 million light years away. The largest explosion known to date in the universe was recorded there. The outbreak released about five times more energy than the previous record holder registered in 2005, writes the team led by Simona Giacintucci from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington in the journal "The Astrophysical Journal" .
"We have seen outbreaks in the centers of galaxies before, but this one is really, really massive," said co-author Melanie Johnston-Hollitt of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in a statement from her facility.
Using @ NASA's @chandraxray, @ESA_XMM, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope #GMRT and @mwatelescope an international team of researchers has observed the BIGGEST EXPLOSION in the Universe, EVER. @JohnstonHollitt @SKA_Australia @SKA_telescope @CSIRO https://t.co/gTtqRd86qB
- ICRAR (@ICRAR) February 28, 2020Black hole is a novelty: "It happened very slowly - like an explosion in slow motion"
Why the explosion turned out to be so violent is still completely unclear. In addition, another fact causes questioning faces among the researchers. The mega explosion is said to have taken place in slow motion. Overall, the spectacle spanned an adventurous period: "It happened very slowly - like an explosion in slow motion that spanned hundreds of millions of years, " continued Johnston-Hollitt.
This extremely strong eruption took place in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the universe that are held together by gravity and contain thousands of individual galaxies, dark matter and hot gas.
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Initially, researchers doubted: "The universe is a strange place"
Back in 2016, astronomers had noticed a huge dent in the ultra-hot gas around the black hole with NASA X-ray telescopes. There you can pack the Milky Way - our home galaxy - 15 times side by side, explains team leader Giacintucci. Even then, the theory was circulating that the bump may have been caused by an explosion. But the idea was ultimately rejected because even the scientists thought such a detonation was unthinkable. You should be wrong, as Melanie Johnston-Hollitt admits: "People were skeptical about the size of the outbreak. But it really is. The universe is a strange place."
In total, Ophiuchus spans thousands of galaxies. The black hole, presumably responsible for the explosion, is located in a galaxy in the center of Ophiuchus .
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Rubric list picture: © dpa / ---
