For the first time, astronomers have succeeded in detecting a cosmic impact unlike anything ever seen before. At once, two of the most grandiose phenomena in the Universe manifested themselves in one place: a supermassive black hole and a collision of giant clusters of galaxies merged and created an incredible in size cosmic accelerator of elementary particles.
By combining data from the Chandra telescope and the giant GMRT radio telescope in India, as well as a variety of other telescopes, the researchers have figured out exactly what happens when matter is ejected from a giant black hole as a result of the merger of two huge clusters of galaxies.
“We have seen each of these exciting phenomena individually in many places,” said Rhineout van Veeren, author of the new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. “However, this is the first time we see them clearly interconnected in the same system.”
It turned out that this cosmic double impact originated in a pair of colliding galaxy clusters called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412, located about two billion light-years from Earth. That is, two very massive clusters collided, each weighing about a quadrillion solar masses.
A supermassive black hole in one of the galaxy clusters has created a spinning, dense magnetic funnel. The powerful electromagnetic fields associated with this structure accelerated the flow of incoming gas in the vicinity of the black hole, transforming it into an energetic, high-speed jet. These accelerated particles in the jet then accelerated again as a result of collision with colossal shock waves – cosmic versions of sonic booms, like those generated by supersonic aircraft. Only in this case it happened when colliding with massive gas clouds associated with galaxy clusters.
This discovery allowed astronomers to answer the question of the origin of the beautiful radio emission stretching for millions of light years in Abell 3411 and Abell 3412.
Sources: phys
