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Astronomers Record Powerful Sound Wave After Galaxy Collision
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.[Regnum] One of the most powerful shock waves recorded by astronomers in the entire history of observations has reached Earth. It was caused by a collision in a group of galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet, writes the British journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). Galaxy NGC 7318b collided with four other galaxies in the group at 2 million mph (3.2 million km/h), creating a shock front similar to the "sonic boom of a fighter jet," Live Science notes. "The only thing worse would be a new Yoko Ono single dropping" According to Marina Arnaudova, an astrophysicist at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, humanity has a rare chance to observe the complex process of galaxy collision. The "new intruder" NGC 7318b crashed into a huge intergalactic debris field, which led to the compression of plasma and gas. "In doing so, it reactivated the plasma, causing it to glow brightly at radio frequencies and likely triggered the process of star formation," Arnaudova said. Stephan's Quintet, discovered in 1877 by French astronomer Edouard Jean-Marie Stephan, is located 290 million light years from Earth. At the core of the group are galaxies NGC 7317, NGC 7318a, and NGC 7319, which are thought to have been impacted by an "old intruder" — galaxy NGC 7320c. During the collision, almost all of their interstellar medium was ejected into intergalactic space, and the "new intruder" 7318b is currently interacting with this region, the MNRAS report specifies. Scientists are confident that observations of the merger and interaction of galaxies will allow us to understand how they formed and evolved. As reported by Regnum News Agency, in the fall of 2022, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), known as the "China Sky Eye", discovered a huge structure of atomic gas while observing Stephan's Quintet. According to a study published in the journal Nature, the linear scale of the structure of atomic hydrogen reaches approximately two million light years, or 0.6 megaparsecs, which is the largest of its kind ever discovered in the Universe. Posted by: badanov 2024-11-24 |
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