Astronomers observed, for the first time, two galaxies involved in a true “duel” in the deep space . Using combined observations of terrestrial telescopes over almost four years, researchers have seen these distant galaxies approaching each other at more than 1.8 million kilometers per hour .
One of them repeatedly triggered intense beams of radiation against the other, dispersing clouds of gas and weakening the opponent’s ability to form new stars.
“This is why we call ‘just cosmic,” said Pasquier Noterdaeme, a researcher at the Paris Astrophysics Institute and the Franco-Chilean Astronomy Laboratory in Chile, which was part of the team responsible for the discovery.
What noterdaeme and his colleagues observed was a distant image of two galaxies in the merger process, 11 billion light years from Earth. The findings, described in a study published on Wednesday (21) in the magazine NatureThey offer a rare glimpse of an old period of the universe, when galaxic mergers and star formation were more common.
Cosmic approach
Working with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the Southern European Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (Alma), both in Chile, the researchers found that the intense radiation of the “attacker” galaxy comes from its brilliant core – a quasar – fueled by a supermassive black hole.
According to NASA, the intense gravity of the black hole attracts matter so energetically that dust and gas heat up millions of degrees and become bright. These materials revolve around the region before they are swallowed, forming a “Acception Disk”, from which jets of energy matter come out towards the space.
Each explosion of ultraviolet waves of this is about a thousand times stronger than the radiation of the Milky Way, which causes hydrogen molecules in the stellar formation regions of the “victim” galaxy to separate and disperse, according to the study.
Stars form when large gas and dust clusters reach critical mass and collapse under their own gravity. However, after being scattered by radiation, these clouds were no longer dense or large enough to create new stars.
As more material from the “victim” galaxy approaches the black hole, he further feeds Quasar. It is known that the quasars can “disconnect” from time to time, explained Sergei Balashev, co-author of the study and researcher at the Ioffe Institute in Russia-which may allow molecular clouds to reform.
“It’s really the first time we can see the effect of radiation from a quasar on the molecular gas of a nearby galaxy,” said Balashev. So far, this effect was only theorized, without confirmation by direct observation.
Initially, scientists wanted to observe this in particular because of their unique characteristics among thousands of low -resolution spectra – something like a fingerprint of distant celestial objects that reveals clues about their composition, temperature and activity.
“It’s like finding a needle in the haystack,” said Balashev. However, according to noterdaeme, the light of quasars is so intense that it often overshadows their own host galaxies, making it difficult to observe neighboring galaxies.
According to NASA, as so dynamic and luminous are rare. Only about a thousand of them are known in the primitive universe, said previously Anniek Gloudemans, a researcher at Noirlab, CNN .
“At first we just knew that there was molecular gas between the” attacker “galaxy and us. Only then, with larger telescopes did we detect that there were two galaxies,” said Noterdaeme.
While the pair seemed overlapping in the low resolution spectra, high-resolution images of the Alma revealed that the galaxies are separated by thousands of light years. Using the VLT, the researchers studied the density and distance of the gas affected by the radiation of Quasar.
As the light of these galaxies comes from billions of years ago at the beginning of the universe, it is possible that they have already merged – but there is no certainty, said Balashev.
A breath of the past
Scientists believe that quasars and galactic mergers were much more common in the early days of the universe, according to Dong-woo Kim, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian center of astrophysics, which did not participate in the research.
Galaxies merge when they are pulled toward gravity – something more frequent when the universe was more compact. Over time, he expanded and many galaxies came together in larger ones.
According to noterdaeme, 10 billion years ago the universe had been going through an interesting period, which astronomers call “cosmic noon” when the stars were formed at a rapid pace.
Despite less common today, galaxy mergers continue to happen all the time. Even the Milky Way is expected to merge with the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years. But the research team still does not know if the phenomenon of “fair cosmic” is typical in galactic collisions.
“It’s an exciting field of study,” said Kim. “Research like this can teach us more about the birth of new galaxies and how they evolve over time.”
Remember: NASA Hubble Telescope Captures New Photo of the Galaxy
This content was originally published in astronomers register for the first time galaxies “dueling” in space; See at CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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