Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all
A black hole punched a hole 15 Milky Ways across in a galaxy cluster’s gas, by far the largest ‘kaboom’ ever seen.
The Universe, everywhere we look, is full of cataclysmic events and transient outbursts.
The Crab Nebula, as shown here with data from five different observatories, shows how material gets ejected from a supernova. The material shown here spans about 5 light-years in extent, originating from a star that went supernova about 1,000 years ago, teaching us that the typical speed of the ejecta is around 1,500 km/s. The total energy output of an event like this is approximately 10 billion times the present energy output of the Sun. (NASA, ESA, G. DUBNER (IAFE, CONICET-UNIVERSITY OF BUENOS AIRES) ET AL.; A. LOLL ET AL.; T. TEMIM ET AL.; F. SEWARD ET AL.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; CHANDRA/CXC; SPITZER/JPL-CALTECH; XMM-NEWTON/ESA; AND HUBBLE/STSCI)
They come in all sorts of varieties, from supernovae to black holes to merger events and more.
Zw II 96 in the constellation of Delphinus, the Dolphin, is an example of a galaxy merger located some 500 million light-years away. Star formation is triggered by these classes of events, and can use up large amounts of gas within each of the progenitor galaxies, rather than a steady stream of low-level star formation found in isolated galaxies. Note the streams of stars between the interacting galaxies. (NASA, ESA, THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)-ESA/HUBBLE COLLABORATION AND A. EVANS (UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE/NRAO/STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY))
In this artistic rendering, a blazar is accelerating protons that produce pions, which produce neutrinos and gamma rays. Photons are also produced. Extreme events in energy are generated by processes occurring around the largest supermassive black holes known in the Universe when they’re actively feeding. (ICECUBE/NASA)
Supernovae release up to 10⁴⁴ joules (J) of energy: totaling the Sun’s entire lifetime output.
For the real black holes that exist or get created in our Universe, we can observe the radiation emitted by their surrounding matter, and the gravitational waves produced by the inspiral, merger, and ringdown. The most energetic black hole mergers seen by LIGO are thousands of times more energetic than supernovae. (LIGO/CALTECH/MIT/SONOMA STATE (AURORE SIMONNET))
LIGO’s black hole mergers were even more energetic: up to ~10⁴⁷ J.
The second-largest black hole as seen from Earth, the one at the center of the galaxy M87, is shown in three views here. At the top is optical from Hubble, at the lower-left is radio from NRAO, and at the lower-right is X-ray from Chandra. These differing views have different resolutions dependent on the optical sensitivity, wavelength of light used, and size of the telescope mirrors used to observe them. These are all examples of radiation emitted from the regions around black holes, demonstrating that black holes aren’t so black, after all. (TOP, OPTICAL, HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE / NASA / WIKISKY; LOWER LEFT, RADIO, NRAO / VERY LARGE ARRAY (VLA); LOWER RIGHT, X-RAY, NASA / CHANDRA X-RAY TELESCOPE)
The galaxy Centaurus A is the closest example of an active galaxy to Earth, with its high-energy jets caused by electromagnetic acceleration around the central black hole. The extent of its jets are far smaller than the jets that Chandra has observed around Pictor A, which themselves are much smaller than the jets found in massive galaxy clusters. (NASA/CXC/CFA/R.KRAFT ET AL.)
Accreted matter gets accelerated by these behemoths, ejecting particles all the way into intergalactic space.
The active galaxy IRAS F11119+3257 shows, when viewed up close, outflows that may be consistent with a major merger. Supermassive black holes may only be visible when they’re ‘turned on’ by an active feeding mechanism, explaining why we can see these ultra-distant black holes at all. (NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER/SDSS/S. VEILLEUX)
Smashing into the surrounding gas and plasma, they can carve cavities that span millions of light-years.
This infrared light image showcases the large Carina nebula, which houses Eta Carinae at the lower left. The gas and dust loops visible arise not only from material blown off from Eta Carinae itself, but also from the material of the larger star-forming region that spawned it millions of years ago. This is a miniature version, on the scale of a single star cluster, of what’s happening on intergalactic scales in galaxy clusters. (ESO / VERY LARGE TELESCOPE / T. PREIBISCH ET AL.)
The radio data of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster reveals the presence of supermassive black holes (in white), but also an extraordinarily large population of gas and ultra-hot plasma, at temperatures in excess of tens of millions of K. (RADIO: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT)
NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope found an enormous source of X-rays there, 15 times our galaxy’s diameter.
The X-ray data, shown here in pink and overlaid atop the infrared data, transforms this non-descript clusters of galaxies into an enormously bright and large source in the sky. The X-ray data, even at a distance of 390 million light-years, takes up about a quarter of a degree on the sky: half the size of the full Moon. (X-RAY: CHANDRA: NASA/CXC/NRL/S. GIACINTUCCI, ET AL., XMM-NEWTON: ESA/XMM-NEWTON; INFRARED: 2MASS/UMASS/IPAC-CALTECH/NASA/NSF)
Combined with infrared and radio observations, an enormous cavity emerges.
A combination of data from X-ray, radio, and infrared observatories revealed an enormous cavity spanning ~1.5 million light-years across, corresponding to the largest single-event release of energy ever discovered. (X-RAY: CHANDRA: NASA/CXC/NRL/S. GIACINTUCCI, ET AL., XMM-NEWTON: ESA/XMM-NEWTON; RADIO: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT; INFRARED: 2MASS/UMASS/IPAC-CALTECH/NASA/NSF)
Lynx, as a next-generation X-ray observatory, will serve as the ultimate complement to optical 30-meter class telescopes being built on the ground and observatories like James Webb and WFIRST in space. Lynx will have to compete with the ESA’s Athena mission, which has a superior field-of-view, but Lynx truly shines in terms of angular resolution and sensitivity. Both observatories could revolutionize and extend our view of the X-ray Universe. (NASA DECADAL SURVEY / LYNX INTERIM REPORT)
An X-ray and radio composite of OJ 287 during one of its flaring phases. The ‘orbital trail’ that you see in both views is a hint of the secondary black hole’s motion. This system is a binary supermassive system, where one component is approximately 18 billion solar masses and the other is 150 million solar masses. When they merge, they may emit as much energy, albeit in the form of gravitational waves, as this new record-breaking galaxy cluster. (FALSE COLOR: X-RAY IMAGE FROM THE CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY; CONTOURS: 1.4 GHZ RADIO IMAGE FROM THE VERY LARGE ARRAY)
Only supermassive black hole mergers, hitherto unseen, may surpass them.
Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals, and no more than 200 words. Talk less; smile more.
