Monday, 13 March 2023 – 14:03 WIB
LIVE Techno – A galaxy in the relatively early universe named 3C 297 is mysteriously seen alone. Though its surroundings indicate that it should consist of a cluster of at least 100 galaxies.
Some of them are the size of the Milky Way. The fact that 3C 297 is alone suggests that something unusual is happening to all the galaxies that should be there.
“It appears that we have a galaxy cluster that has lost almost all of its galaxies. We expected to see at least a dozen galaxies the size of the Milky Way, but we only saw one,” said astronomer Valentina Missaglia of the University of Torino in Italy.
Data about 3C 297’s surroundings comes from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which studies high-energy radiation from powerful sources throughout the cosmos.
The galaxy itself is the source of the radiation that houses quasars, active galactic nuclei containing supermassive black holes that chug matter at such high speeds that they blaze with some of the brightest light in the universe.
Quasars often emit jets of plasma from the polar regions of supermassive black holes at their cores, hurling jets of matter into space at speeds close to that of light in a vacuum.
Illustration of the Andromeda galaxy
Photo :
- ABC Australia / The University of Sydney
