Supermassive Black Holes In Distant Galaxies Are Mysteriously Aligned

Monday, May 2, 2016

Supermassive Black Holes In Distant Galaxies Are Mysteriously Aligned

Supermassive Black Holes In Distant Galaxies Are Mysteriously Aligned:

A supermassive black hole has been found in an unusual spot: an isolated region of space where only small, dim galaxies reside. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In 1974, astronomers detected a massive source of radio wave emissions coming from the center of our galaxy. Within a few decades time, it was concluded that the radio wave source corresponded to a particularly large, spinning black hole. Known as Sagittarius A, this particular black hole is so large that only the designation "supermassive" would do. Since its discovery, astronomers have come to conclude that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) lie at the center of almost all of the known massive galaxies.But thanks to a recent radio imaging by a team of researchers from the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape, in South Africa, it has been further determined that in a region of the distant universe, the SMBHs are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction. This finding, which shows an alignment of the jets of galaxies over a large volume of space, is the first of its kind, and could tell us much about the early Universe.This research, which appeared recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was made possible thanks to a three-year deep radio imaging survey conducted by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India. After examining the radio waves coming from a region of space called ELAIS-N1, the South African research team found that the jets being produced by these galaxies were all in alignment.This finding could only be explained by venturing that the SMBHs creating them were all spinning in the same direction, which in turn reveals something rather interesting about how these black holes came to be. In essence, the only likely reason why multiple SMBHs could be spinning in the same direction over a large volume of space is if they were the result of primordial mass fluctuations in the early universe.

As Prof. Andrew Russ Taylor - the joint UWC/UCT SKA Chair, Director of the recently-launched Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, and principal author of the Monthly Notices study - explained: "Since these black holes don’t know about each other, or have any way of exchanging information or influencing each other directly over such vast scales, this spin alignment must have occurred during the formation of the galaxies in the early universe."

This was rather surprising, and something the research team wasn't prepared for. Initially, the goal of the project was to explore the faintest radio sources in the universe using the latest generation of radio telescopes; which, it was hoped, would provide a preview of what the next-generation of telescopes like South Africa's MeerKAT telescope and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will provide once they go online. While previous studies have shown that there are deviations in the orientations of certain galaxies, this was the first time that astronomers were able to use the jets produced by the SMBA holes to reveal their alignments. After noting the symmetry that was apparent between them, the research team considered several options as to why an alignment in galaxies (even on scales larger than galaxy clusters) might be.However, it is important to note that a large-scale spin distribution of this kind has never been predicted by theories. Such an unknown phenomenon certainly presents a challenge when it comes to prevailing theories about the origins of the Universe, which will have to be revised somewhat to account for this. While earlier studies have detected deviations from uniformity in the orientations of galaxies, this was the first time that radio jets were used to measure their alignment. This was made possible thanks to the sensitivity of the radio images used, which also benefitted from the fact that measurements of the intensity of radio emissions are not effected by things like scattering, extinction and Faraday Rotation (which may have effected other studies).

Furthermore, the presence of alignments of this nature could shed light on the orientation and evolution of these galaxies, particularly in relation to large-scale structures. They could also help astronomer to learn more about the motions in the primordial matter fluctuations that gave rise to the current structure of the Universe. As Taylor and the other authors of the paper also note, it will be interesting to compare this with predictions of angular momentum structure from universe simulations.

In recent years, several simulations have been produced to model the large-sale structure of the Universe and how it evolved. These include, but are not limited to, the FastSound project - which has been surveying galaxies in the Universe using the Subaru Telescope’s Fiber Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS) - and the DESI Project, which will rely on the Mayall Telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to chart the history of the Universe going back 11 billion years and create an extremely precise 3D map.

And then there's the Australian Square-Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a radio telescope currently being commissioned by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia. When completed, the ASKAP array will combine fast survey speed and high sensitivity to study the early Universe.

In the coming years, these projects, combined with this new information about the alignments of supermassive black holes, are likely to shed some serious light on how the Universe came to be, from creation to the present day. As Taylor puts it, "We’re beginning to understand how the large-scale structure of the universe came about, starting from the Big Bang and growing as a result of disturbances in the early universe, to what we have today, and that helps us explore what the universe of tomorrow will be like."

Further Reading: Royal Astronomical Society

The post Supermassive Black Holes In Distant Galaxies Are Mysteriously Aligned appeared first on Universe Today.

FASHION WEEK - USA Fashion and Music News
HOLLYWOOD NEWS - Hollywood News Blogger
PINTEREST ACROSS THE UNIVERSE - Google Images Nasa Images
LAST FM - Download Music Legally Direct From Artist
WOMEN COMMUNITY - Women Communty Photography Videos Beauty
DISNEY CHANNEL - Photos and Music News
BABY JUSTIN BIEBER - Google Images Google News
LADY GAGA - Google Images Google News
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE - Google Images Universe Pictures
VICTORIA´S SECRET COMMUNITY - Victoria´s Secret Fashion Show Photos

No comments:

Post a Comment

NASA Photos Photography

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Monday, May 2, 2016