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Judi Lynn

(160,218 posts)
Fri May 22, 2020, 11:19 PM May 2020

Scientists Spot the Biggest Known Explosion in the Universe


The blast is about five times bigger than the previous record holder

By Mike Wall, SPACE.com on February 29, 2020



Evidence for the biggest explosion ever seen comes from a combination of X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton, and the Murchison Widefield Array and Giant Metrewave Telescope, as shown here. Based on the size of the cavity carved out in a surrounding cloud of hot gas, researchers estimate this blast released five times more energy than the previous record holder. Credit: Chandra: NASA, CXC, NRL and S. Giacintucci, et al., XMM-Newton: ESA and XMM-Newton (x-ray); NCRA, TIFR, GMRT; Infrared: 2MASS, UMass, IPAC-Caltech, NASA and NSF (radio)

Astronomers have spotted a cosmic blast that dwarfs all others.

A gargantuan explosion tore through the heart of a distant galaxy cluster, releasing about five times more energy than the previous record holder, a new study reports.

"In some ways, this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain," study lead author Simona Giacintucci, of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "A key difference is that you could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas."

The explosion occurred in the Ophiuchus cluster, which lies about 390 million light-years from Earth. Giacintucci and her colleagues think the source was a supermassive black hole in one of the cluster’s constituent galaxies—specifically, jets of radiation and material spewing from the light-gobbling monster, which are powered by inflowing gas and dust.

The possibility of an incredibly powerful Ophiuchus explosion was first raised in 2016 in a study led by Norbert Werner, which examined images captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Werner and his colleagues reported a strangely curved edge in the cluster, which could be part of the wall of a cavity formed by a blast. And what a blast it would be: The scientists calculated that it would take about 5 times 10^54 joules of energy to create such a cavity. (For perspective, humanity’s total global energy consumption each year is about 6 times 10^20 joules.)

More:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-spot-the-biggest-known-explosion-in-the-universe/
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Scientists Spot the Biggest Known Explosion in the Universe (Original Post) Judi Lynn May 2020 OP
clearly they missed qazplm135 May 2020 #1
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