Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered

NASA website ^ | January 5, 2005 | Dolores Beasley, Steve Roy, Megan Watzke

[snarks_when_bored]

Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered

Astronomers have found the most powerful eruption in the universe using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. A super massive black hole generated this eruption by growing at a remarkable rate. This discovery shows the enormous appetite of large black holes, and the profound impact they have on their surroundings.

The huge eruption was seen in a Chandra image of the hot, X-ray emitting gas of a galaxy cluster called MS 0735.6+7421. Two vast cavities extend away from the super massive black hole in the cluster's central galaxy. The eruption, which has lasted for more than 100 million years, has generated energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of gamma-ray bursts.

This event was caused by gravitational energy release, as enormous amounts of matter fell toward a black hole. Most of the matter was swallowed, but some of it was violently ejected before being captured by the black hole. "I was stunned to find that a mass of about 300 million suns was swallowed," said Brian McNamara of Ohio University in Athens. "This is as large as another super massive black hole." He is lead author of the study about the discovery, which is in the January 6, 2005, issue of Nature.

Astronomers are not sure where such large amounts of matter came from. One theory is gas from the host galaxy catastrophically cooled and was swallowed by the black hole. The energy released shows the black hole in MS 0735 has grown dramatically during this eruption. Previous studies suggest other large black holes have grown very little in the recent past, and that only smaller black holes are still growing quickly.

"This new result is as surprising as it is exciting," said co-author Paul Nulsen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. "This black hole is feasting, when it should be fasting."

Radio emission within the cavities shows jets from the black hole erupted to create the cavities. Gas is being pushed away from the black hole at supersonic speeds over a distance of about a million light-years. The mass of the displaced gas equals about a trillion suns, more than the mass of all the stars in the Milky Way.

The rapid growth of super massive black holes is usually detected by observing very bright radiation from the centers of galaxies in the optical and X-ray wavebands, or luminous radio jets. In MS 0735 no bright central radiation is found, and the radio jets are faint. The true nature of MS 0735 is only revealed through X-ray observations of the hot cluster gas.

"Until now we had no idea this black hole was gorging itself," said co-author Michael Wise of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. "The discovery of this eruption shows X-ray telescopes are necessary to understand some of the most violent events in the universe."

The astronomers estimated how much energy was needed to create the cavities by calculating the density, temperature and pressure of the hot gas. By making a standard assumption that 10 percent of the gravitational energy goes into launching the jets, they estimated how much material the black hole swallowed.

Besides generating the cavities, some of the energy from this eruption should keep the hot gas around the black hole from cooling, and some of it may also generate large-scale magnetic fields in the galaxy cluster. Chandra observers have discovered other cavities in galaxy clusters, but this one is easily the largest and the most powerful.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Space Mission Directorate, Washington. Northrop Grumman of Redondo Beach, Calif., was the prime development contractor for the observatory. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Dolores Beasley
NASA Headquarters, Washington

Steve Roy
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, Cambridge, Mass.

[beethovenfan]

It's Bush's fault!

[avg_freeper]

"Gas is being pushed away from the black hole at supersonic speeds over a distance of about a million light-years."

What's the speed of sound in a vacuum?

[razoroccam]

I thought that the string theory had been discredited.

[snarks_when_bored]

How far away is this from us? Follow up questions. When did it happen? Is it still goin on?

About 2.6 billion light years away. So we're seeing it as it was 2.6 billion years ago. From out standpoint, it's still going on, but we're observing it as it was then. I suspect it's still there, but we'd have to guess what it looks like at this instant.

A link to the Chandra website.

[mcg1969]

I thought this was the largest (bimbo) eruption:

[ELS]

Interesting.

[snarks_when_bored]

What's the speed of sound in a vacuum?

Sound doesn't propagate in a vacuum. By 'supersonic' in this context, I assume that it means faster than the speed of pressure waves propagating through the gaseous medium surrounding the black hole. Just as objects in our atmosphere can move faster than the sound they generate, so too can gas molecules exceed the speed of the pressure waves generated as they're pushed by the black hole's gravitational and magnetic slingshot effects.

(I'm not a physicist, but I play one on FR.)

[Lurker]

Nice catch.

L

[snarks_when_bored]

I'm familiar with the string theory conjectures to which you refer, but I can't say whether your further conjecture has merit. I don't know enough to even guess.

[1LongTimeLurker]

I thought black holes swallowed everything, including energy and gas. So how is it that this black hole is responsible for an explosion with gas streaming away from it, and with so much gamma radiation?

Read "The Elegant Universe", black holes actually are capable of emissions.

See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5473323/

DUBLIN, Ireland - After 29 years of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was wrong about black holes.

The renowned Cambridge University physicist formally presented a paper Wednesday arguing that black holes, the celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of objects swallowed up and eventually could spit bits out “in a mangled form.” Last week, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., he revealed he had changed his long-held thinking on black holes.

Hawking’s radical new theory caps his three-decade struggle to explain a paradox in scientific thinking: How can objects really “disappear” inside a black hole and leave no trace, as he long believed, when subatomic theory says matter can be transformed but never fully destroyed?

Hawking had previously insisted that black holes destroy all molecular fingerprints of their contents and emit only a generic form of radiation.

But on Wednesday at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, Hawking presented mind-boggling new calculations that suggest black holes are able to cast out their contents — and that there’s only one way in and one way out.

[snarks_when_bored]

You've got that right!

[Koblenz]

Chandra X-ray Observatory. A super massive black hole generated this eruption by growing at a remarkable rate.

Can we stop talking about Gary Condit?

[SeamusVA]

What, did Michael Moore break wind????

[HamiltonJay]

Yes, me either, since I know very little... it just seems to me that if the base concept is, we are on a membrane, and all (nearly all) of what we percieve is tied to that membrane, but Gravitons (gravity) for whatever reason is free to leave the membrane, and in further theory perhaps encounter other membranes which may or may not bind them...

Our universe (membrane) would have gravitons leaving or flowing throught it potentially all the time with narry a notice or care.

But say something happened, and for some reason a point on the membrane suddenly changed in some way, causing gravitons not to so easily float away, but to become stuck, like say, plaque in an artery... then a singular stuck graviton would exert more gravitational force that we normally experience.... then that same graviton or event attracted more gravitons, tying them as well to the membrane... the gravitational force would rapidly expand from that point, and would appear to us as a black hole or singularity event... and the "critical mass" point for the devastating impact on our reality when it occurred would be monsterous in its effects.

[avg_freeper]

Sorry, I meant it as a rhetorical question.

The idea of "speed of sound" as presented in this article is silly. By its definition the velocity of the air coming coming out of the air vent above me could be considered supersonic once you add its velocity vector relative to me to its velocity vector relative to the sun.

Speed of sound has everything to do with the velocity of a fluid relative to a secondary mass it's capable of communicating pressure info with none of which is implied by the article.

[PoorMuttly]

"The Black Cloud"...reality, not the book..coming soon to a Planet near you !

[snarks_when_bored]

Write it up! (smile)

You've probably already seen them, but I'll mention last year's February, May and September issues of Scientific American. Some excellent articles relevant to these issues.

[snarks_when_bored]

Maybe my little improvised explanation is close to being right. But maybe the authors meant something more mundane, using 'supersonic' to mean what we'd expect it to mean, i.e., 'faster than the speed of sound in Earth's atmosphere'.

[snopercod]

Oh, whew, I misread the title. I though it said "erection".

[mdmathis6]

A Redneck's reaction to this discovery: Hey Bubba, it kinda reminds me of a Big Gulp from the 7-11....that's it, we'll call this here black hol'..."BIG GULP!"