Radio observations are filling out an impressive picture of huge jets blasting out from a galactic black hole. The latest findings support the view that Centaurus A is a giant particle accelerator, powered by the active galaxy's matter-sucking monster.
Centaurus A is a giant elliptical galaxy that's in the process of merging with a companion spiral galaxy, about 13 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Centaurus. Like our own Milky Way galaxy, Centaurus A has a supermassive black hole at its center, with a mass equal to 100 million suns. (Our galaxy's supermassive black hole is wimpy in comparison, weighing only as much as 4 million suns.)
All that crashing, smashing and swirling around Centaurus A sparks intense star formation, making it one of the most spectacular objects in the sky - particularly when it comes to radio and X-ray emissions.
Latest image of Centarus-A
The Universe never disappoints.
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People pray so that God won't crush them like bugs.
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Oil an emergency?! It's about time, Brigadier, that the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense.
—The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975)
Of course, those plumes are tens of thousands of light-years big, and are probably happening over the course of millions or billions of years. Yeah, when it comes to space, the concept of scale gets pooped on.
The most incredible part is when you remember that all the other dots are other galaxies and it is just... floating there alone. The universe is huge and empty.
Samuel wrote:The most incredible part is when you remember that all the other dots are other galaxies and it is just... floating there alone. The universe is huge and empty.
I like to think of the stars in the foreground as a sort of veil. Then I contemplate how far away those stars are, and just how far beyond them that galaxy is.
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On a more morbid note, any lifeforms that existed in any of those galaxies (I am assuming here that life is a naturally occurring phenomenon in this Universe) is truly and epically fucked.
This is an awesome reminder at just how tenuous our own existence is.
OsirisLord wrote:On a more morbid note, any lifeforms that existed in any of those galaxies (I am assuming here that life is a naturally occurring phenomenon in this Universe) is truly and epically fucked.
This is an awesome reminder at just how tenuous our own existence is.
On a comforting note though since all of it happens over huge time scales cosmic stuff like this aren't much of an issue.
More local events, like global warming though, different story of course.
