Two billion light-years away, two galactic clusters merge in an intergalactic collapse. At least one of the supermassive black holes located here creates a powerful electromagnetic tunnel. This tunnel accelerates the gas located here to incredible speeds, in fact, turning into an intergalactic analogue of the hadron collider - a particle accelerator that "spits out" one of the most highly charged radiation in the Universe.
The image above shows a couple of different processes occurring simultaneously and as a result of creating an "intergalactic bazooka". X-rays from colliding galactic clusters (some of the largest cosmic structures in the universe) and captured by NASA's orbiting space X-ray observatory, Chandra, are shown in blue. Each such cluster is a quadrillion times heavier than our Sun. The dimmer blue glow indicates that gas is filling each of the two clusters. In one of them, as a result of collision, shock waves are created that affect particles in another cluster, forcing them to move at the speed of light.
Red marks the emission of radio waves that have been picked up by GMRT in India - the world's largest radio telescope operating in the meter range. This radiation is created by black holes (indicated by bright pink bubbles) located in the centers of galaxies. The most interesting thing happens when black holes and hot gas begin to interact. Astronomers already know that supermassive black holes can accelerate particles inside the clouds of gas that surround them. However, when these accelerated particles encounter a shock wave, additional acceleration is imparted to them. The scientists shared a snapshot of this process at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held recently in Texas, and then published their observations in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“This is the first time we've seen such a double acceleration. First with the help of a supermassive black hole, and then also with a shock wave,”comments Reinua van Wiiren, an astrophysicist at Harvard University and the main author of the study.
The presence of such a giant intergalactic particle accelerator could mean that previously unseen particles could be created in space. Scientists themselves create in about the same way as them, using high-energy physics and the largest particle accelerator on Earth (the Large Hadron Collider). The LHC, for example, is now used to observe the Higgs boson.
“Potentially, such space accelerators can reach energies of a much higher order than our LHC. Perhaps millions of times more,”continues van Wiiren.
Scientists do not (and may never have) the tools to observe the subtle specifics of what may be happening in space at a distance of 2 billion light years, but van Wiiren is convinced and very happy that astronomers already have research on such giant particle accelerators. will soon allow for new technologies.
“This is really cool. Since we are not yet able to create such levels of energy on Earth. Perhaps in the future we will be able to learn how to accelerate particles even faster than the current LHC does, but not now,”concluded van Wiiren.
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NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK
