Oei et al., ArXiv, 2022
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The radio lobe of Alcyoneus, the largest radio galaxy that has ever existed.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—Coincidentally, the team led by Ph.D. Martijn Oei have found radio galaxy with a length of at least 16 million light years. The pair of plasma clumps are the largest structures created by galaxies known so far. This finding refutes several longstanding hypotheses about the growth of radio galaxies.
A supermassive black hole lurks at the center of many galaxies, which slows the birth of new stars and therefore greatly affects the galaxy’s entire life cycle. Sometimes, this leads to chaotic scenes: a black hole can create two jet streams, which hurl the building materials for baby stars out of the galaxy at nearly the speed of light. In this violent process, stardust heats up to such an extent that it dissolves into plasma and glows in radio light.
An international team of researchers from Leiden (Netherlands), Hertfortshire, Oxford (both UK) and Paris (France) have now collected the light with the help of the LOFAR telescope, whose center is located in the swampy Netherlands ‘radio dark’ nature reserve, where your smartphone is located. may lose signal.
The image of the two plasma clumps is very special, because scientists have never seen such a large structure created by a single galaxy. This discovery suggests that the spheres of influence of some galaxies reach far from their immediate surroundings. How far, exactly? That’s hard to determine. Astronomical images are taken from a single point of view (Earth), and therefore contain no depth. As a result, scientists were only able to measure a portion of the radio galaxy’s length: a low estimate of the total length. But even that lower limit, more than 16 million light years, is enormous, and is comparable to a hundred Milky Way in a row.
This process is quite normal. Even the Milky Way has a radio lobe. What we don’t really have a good grip on is why, in some galaxies, they grow to enormous sizes, on the megaparsec scale. These are called giant radio galaxies, and the most extreme examples could be key to understanding what drives their growth.
“If there are characteristics of the host galaxy that are important causes for the growth of radio giant galaxies, then the parent of the largest radio giant galaxy will most likely have it,” Martijn Oei, lead author of the study from the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands explains in their preprint paper, which has been accepted for publication. published in Astronomy & Astrophysicsas reported Science Alert.
“Since Earth occupies no special place in the universe, it is highly unlikely that such the largest galactic structure would ever be in our own backyard. And indeed, the radio giant is three billion light years from us,” Oei said. “Despite the puzzling distance, the giant appears as big as the moon in the sky, an indication that the structure must have a record length.”
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Part of LOFAR in Exloo, Drenthe.
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The fact that the LOFAR telescope’s radio eye has just spotted the giant is due to its relatively dim plumage. By reprocessing the existing set of images in such a way that fine patterns stand out, scientists were suddenly able to see the giant.
Researchers have named the giant structure Alcyoneus, after the son of Ouranos, the ancient Greek sky god. This mythological Alcyoneus was a giant who fought against Heracles and the other Olympians for supremacy over the cosmos. On Berlin’s famous Pergamon Altar, this statue of Alcyoneus is carved.
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