This swarm of thousands of galaxies and 2 million light years in diameter, the Perseus cluster of galaxies, is undoubtedly one of the most massive objects in the universe. Now, data collected by the Japanese space agency JAXA’s Hitomi probe – before disintegrating – have revealed surprising information about this conglomerate of galaxies immersed in a huge gas cloud of millions of degrees.
Exploration of the Perseus cluster, which lies about 240 million light-years from Earth, has shown that the supermassive black hole at the center of these galaxies molds and shapes the galaxies, but the core of this cluster it is surprisingly “quiet; that is, the plasma surrounding the central black hole is not spinning as fast as astronomers had theorized.
This kind of hot plasma atmosphere that also makes up the cluster, is invisible to the eyes and optical telescopes, but not to X-rays . Thanks to them, we were able to verify that the space between the galaxies in this cluster was not empty, but was made up of a plasma atmosphere that dominates this entire galactic grouping.
Astronomers have called the influence of this central black hole in its host galaxy a “cosmic thermostat” that directs the evolution of the galaxy and the surrounding hot plasma atmosphere. Thus, the scientists observed that the gas in the center of the Perseus cluster is moving at a speed of 164 kilometers per second, quite slow compared to the galaxies and stars within the cluster, which are estimated to travel at least 10 times. faster. This could be because the plasma is more viscous or thicker than previously thought.
The Hitomi probe observations offer researchers, for the first time, a direct measurement of the turbulent velocity of hot plasma that reveals how the colossal energy released by supermassive black holes regulates the growth of the galaxy and the black hole itself. . In the future, it is to be expected that we will know in more detail the behavior of black holes, the origin of galaxy clusters and even the existence of dark matter.
Image Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
