2,000,000 MPH stellar gas stream

[dragon]

Damn thats fast. Previsouly only thought black holes could eject these.

This isn't a giant rainbow sperm, but instead an energetic burst of gases being spat out from the center of a galaxy thanks the the immense pressures of stars forming at its core.

The observation of galaxy SDSS J0905+57 has been made by a team of scientists from the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Previously it was thought that such ejections were only made possible by a black hole at the core of a a galaxy, but this research shows that not to be the case.

The jet shown here was moving at a face-melting 2,000,000 miles per hour, and the gases making it up could form the equivalent of more than 1 billion suns. That, perhaps unsurprisingly, is enough to mean that star formation in this galaxy is now somewhat hampered

link

[Eternal_Freedom]

A 1 billion solar mass gas cloud ejected at 2million mph? Damn.

There' a lot of freaky shit out in the universe. Even as an astronomer I'm still awaed by some of it.

[Borgholio]

I can't find anything online as to how far away this galaxy is from us. If it's several billion lightyears away, then we might be looking at a somewhat normal process in the early evolution of a galaxy...the same way a star will shed a lot of it's mass shortly after ignition before it becomes stable.

[Eternal_Freedom]

If all we have is a blurry and indistinct false-colour image then it's a looooong way off.

[Sea Skimmer]

I can't find anything online as to how far away this galaxy is from us. If it's several billion lightyears away, then we might be looking at a somewhat normal process in the early evolution of a galaxy...the same way a star will shed a lot of it's mass shortly after ignition before it becomes stable.

I browsed around and one article said it is 5 to 6 billion light years away.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/ ... 141448.htm

[Borgholio]

Ah ok thanks. So yeah that could be a fairly young galaxy.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Eh, it might be. Then again apparently it's a "compact" galaxy which is a classification I haven't come across before. Whether they actually mean dwarf galaxy I dont know.

[Irbis]

It would be nice if they, you know, used real, scientific units. Not something used in US cars only. 2 million looks like a big number, but if you divide it, you get measly 600 km/s which is only order of magnitude higher than speeds humans reached 60 years ago. Not so impressive now, eh? "Face melting"? Please...

Even 'billion' sun mass isn't particularly noteworthy, compare with this (and this photo is at once more scary and powerful than one in Gizmodo article).

[Eternal_Freedom]

Actually you get just under 890 km/s. Which is just under 30 times Earth's orbital velocity, or about 80 times Earth's escape velocity. That's still damn fast, so "face melting" is not an unreasonable term for a pop-science article. And a billion solar masses is still a lot for an apparently small galaxy to emit - it's 1/200 to 1/400 of the mass of our entire damn galaxy. For a "compact" galaxy, it could be anywhere from 1-10% of the whole galaxy's mass.

That is a fuckload of matter at a pretty damn high velocity.

[cadbrowser]

It would be nice if they, you know, used real, scientific units.

this

That link on NASA's website you provided states a compact galaxy.

The finding implies there are many other compact galaxies in the universe that contain supermassive black holes.

So, I'm assuming that this classification is scientific and infers, literally a compact galaxy...or perhaps a better word might be compressed? I have no indications that they meant dwarf galaxy at all.