Telescopes detect ‘biggest explosion since Big Bang’

Researchers have detected evidence of a colossal explosion in space which is five times bigger than anything observed before. The huge release of energy is expected to have occurred from a supermassive black hole which is located around some 390 million light-years from Earth. Also, the scientists stated that the explosion might have left a giant dent in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster.

Ophiuchus galaxy cluster

• Ophiuchus galaxy cluster is a large galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole.
• The source of the gigantic eruption to jets has carved out a large cavity in the hot gas.
• The amount of energy required to create the cavity in Ophiuchus far exceeded the previous record holder, a cluster known by the designation MS 0735+74.
• The cluster contains thousands of individual galaxies intermingled with hot gas and dark matter.
• US and European X-ray telescopes found a curved edge to it.
• It is suspected that it might be the wall of a cavity that had been sculpted in its plasma by emissions from a gargantuan black hole in one of the core galaxies.
• The theory was confirmed by a new low-frequency telescope data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India.

Key Points

• Astronomers uses 4 telescopes for the discovery of explosion. The discovery was made using X-Ray data gathered from NASA’s(National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s European Space Agency’s (ESA) XMM-Newton and the radio telescopes used to collect radio data were from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India.
• The explosion Researchers have discovered that the explosive force of the explosion caused a huge gap in the plasma containing hot gases in the galaxy cluster. This gas cloud is located around the Black Hole.
• The discovery has been published in The Astrophysical Journal & Lead author of the study was Dr Simona Giacintucci, from the Naval Research Laboratory in America.

PAPER-III