Scientists have found many galaxies hidden by the light from an incredibly active supermassive black hole. All of them were found in a new image from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The black hole, or rather the quasar PKS1353-341, is located 2.4 billion light-years from Earth. This object is so bright that astronomers initially thought it was in its own region of space by itself. However, on August 16, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal in which they argue that the quasar is actually at the center of a galactic cluster.
"The images are either all in dots or in tangle, and where the tangle is, there are giant balls of hot gas millions of light years in size, which we call clusters, and the dots are black holes accreting gas and glowing as this gas falls into them." - says Michael McDonald, a physicist at MIT and co-author of the new work.
Scientists have put forward the theory that the quasar in the center of the cluster burns especially brightly, as it is in the process of "insane overeating." Huge chunks of matter fall into the quasar from the surrounding disk, causing the black hole to emit huge amounts of energy. The team suggests that this quasar is 46 billion times brighter than the Sun.
The bright light produced during this "feast" is responsible for hiding the galaxies surrounding the quasar, but physicists believe it is temporary. They expect the black hole's glow to eventually dry out - and the cluster will look the same as galactic clusters usually look.
Left: PKS 1353−341 image of the Chandra telescope, which shows a bright central source and the surrounding scattered radiation from the cluster. Right: Magellan PISCO image of the interior of the galactic cluster, showing a giant elliptical galaxy at the very center / MIT.
“It might just be a flash that we were lucky enough to see,” says MacDonald. "In a million years, it might look like a fuzzy ball."
McDonald and his team initially discovered the hidden cluster in 2012. The question of why they missed it at first prompted them to look for similar objects.
Promotional video:
“We started asking ourselves why we hadn’t found it before, because it has incredible properties and is, in principle, very bright,” explains MacDonald. - This is due to the fact that we have developed preconceived ideas about how the cluster should look like. And in this case, it didn't match what we expected, so we missed it."
Scientists have begun a study called CHiPS (Cluster Hiding in Plain Sight, or Clusters Hiding in Plain Sight - Translation by the author) to revise previously taken X-rays. To date, no clusters have been found in 90% of revised data.
“The surprising thing is that the small number of applicants found break the rules,” McDonald said.
In a new report, the first CHiPS results are published: so far only one confirmed galactic cluster has been discovered. Nevertheless, physicists hope to find such objects in the future and hope that clusters will help to learn more about the expansion of the universe.
Vladimir Guillen