USEUROPEAFRICAASIA 中文双语Français
World
Home / World / Americas

Gigantic X-ray 'Tsunami' found in Perseus Galaxy Cluster: NASA

Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-04 15:21

LOS ANGELES - Combining data gathered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with radio observations and computer simulations, an international team of scientists has found a gigantic X-ray "Tsunami" rolling through the Perseus galaxy cluster, a new study indicates.

Spanning about 200,000 light-years, the wave of hot gas, likely formed billions of years ago, is about twice the size of the Milky Way galaxy, according to a paper to be published in the June 2017 issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"Perseus is one of the most massive nearby clusters and the brightest one in X-rays, so Chandra data provide us with unparalleled detail," lead scientist Stephen Walker, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.

"The wave we've identified is associated with the flyby of a smaller cluster, which shows that the merger activity that produced these giant structures is still ongoing." said Walker.

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures bound by gravity in the universe today. Most of the observable matter within galaxy clusters takes the form of superheated gas, averaging tens of millions of degrees, that only glows in X-rays, according to the US space agency NASA.

Observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other instruments have revealed a variety of structures in Perseus' glowing gas, from vast bubbles blown by the supermassive black hole in the cluster's central galaxy, NGC 1275, to an enigmatic concave feature known as the "bay."

Most Viewed in 24 Hours
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US