Space & Astronomy
Most powerful black hole blast discovered
By
T.K. RandallNovember 29, 2012 ·
9 comments
Image Credit: ESO
A blast fives time more powerful than anything ever seen before has been found flowing from a black hole.
Located 11.5 billion light years away, the enormous gravity well has a mass equivalent to three billion suns and is situated at the center of an extremely bright and energetic class of galaxy known as a quasar. Astronomers were able to measure the speed of the flow and determine that it was putting out more than 400 times the weight of our sun every year at 18,000 miles per hour.
"We were hoping to see something like this, but the sheer power of this outflow still took us by surprise," said astronomer Nahum Arav. "I believe this is the smoking gun for several theoretical ideas that use the mechanical energy output of quasars to solve several important problems in the formation of galaxies and cluster of galaxies."
Astronomers have witnessed a record-breaking blast of gas and dust flowing out of a monster black hole more than 11. 5 billion light-years away.
Source:
National Geographic |
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