by Playfuls Staff |
6th October 2006
U.S. astronomers say they've detected a gigantic sonic boom generated by a supermassive black hole, along with [more] evidence for a cacophony of deep sound.
The astronomers, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, made the discovery by using data from the longest X-ray observation ever of M87, a giant elliptical galaxy located in the Virgo cluster of galaxies and is known to harbor one of the universe's most massive black holes.
"We can tell that many deep and different sounds have been rumbling through this cluster for most of the lifetime of the universe," said William Forman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Chandra's M87 observations also give the strongest evidence to date of a shock wave produced by the supermassive black hole, a clear sign of a powerful explosion, the scientists said. The shock wave appears as a nearly circular ring of high-energy X-rays that is 85,000 light-years in diameter.
The new results on M87 were presented during the High-Energy Astrophysics Division meeting this week in San Francisco.
© 2006 UPI
