APOD: An Extreme Black Hole Outburst (2020 Mar 11)

[APOD Robot]

An Extreme Black Hole Outburst

Explanation: Astronomers believe they have now found the most powerful example of a black hole outburst yet seen in our Universe. The composite, false-color featured image is of a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer. The composite includes X-ray images (from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and XMM-Newton) in purple, and a radio image (from India's Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope) in blue (along with an infrared image of the galaxies and stars in the field in white for good measure). The dashed line marks the border of a cavity blown out by the supermassive black hole which lurks at the center of the galaxy marked by the cross. Radio emission fills this cavity. This big blowout is believed to be due to the black hole eating too much and experiencing a transient bout of "black hole nausea", which resulted in the ejection of a powerful radio jet blasting into intergalactic space. The amount of energy needed to blow this cavity is equivalent to about 10 billion supernova explosions.

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[bystander]

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[wolfie138]

if the blast come from the "+", why is the edge of the cavity concave to it?

[starsurfer]

Isn't Ophiuchus a "secret" member of the zodiac?

[orin stepanek]

Kinda way above my head! I thought nothing could escape a black hole! Sort of recycling; putting back out there what it gobbled up?

[Chris Peterson]

Kinda way above my head! I thought nothing could escape a black hole! :shock: Sort of recycling; putting back out there what it gobbled up? 👽

Nothing has escaped a black hole here. It's a phenomenon that takes place just outside the event horizon.

[Joe2567]

C'est dommage. Another blatant example where Mainstream Astrophysics has NO understanding of what is REALLY going on in the Universe.

[DL MARTIN]

How far away did this occur?

[Chris Peterson]

How far away did this occur?

The Ophiuchus galaxy cluster has z=0.028, which means the distance is about 380 million light years.

[Chris Peterson]

C'est dommage. Another blatant example where Mainstream Astrophysics has NO understanding of what is REALLY going on in the Universe.

Actually, we have a decent understanding of the physics that can lead to this sort of event. What is unusual about this is event is its size, not its mechanism.

[Lasse H]

if the blast come from the "+", why is the edge of the cavity concave to it?

This is exactly what I want to know also! The dashed lines drawn in the two rectangles don't seem to have anything at all to do with the pictures shown behind the lines.

[Spif]

10 billion supernova explosions?

How much energy is one standard supernova (sn) I wonder?

The sub-link in the APOD description was less helpful than I was hoping.

Still worth reading though.

Edit: (Answer by asking Google to convert between Joules and Supernovae.)

[neufer]

if the blast come from the "+", why is the edge of the cavity concave to it?

• Because it is a hole in a convex blob of hot pink gas

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<<According to Steve Jobs, Apple's name was inspired by his visit to an apple farm while on a fruitarian diet. Apple's first logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. It was almost immediately replaced by Rob Janoff's "rainbow Apple", the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. Janoff presented Jobs with several different monochromatic themes for the "bitten" logo, and Jobs immediately took a liking to it. The logo was designed with a bite so that it would not be confused with a cherry. This logo is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide.>>

[Ann]

How far away did this occur?

The Ophiuchus galaxy cluster has z=0.028, which means the distance is about 380 million light years.

380 light-years is pretty close, cosmologically speaking.

Ann

[neufer]

The Ophiuchus galaxy cluster has z=0.028, which means the distance is about 380 million light years.

380 light-years is pretty close, cosmologically speaking.

• Even 380 MILLION light-years is pretty close, cosmotologically speaking:

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS : A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG.

18th c. star map illustrating how Ophiuchus's feet cross the ecliptic (Zodiac?).

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<<When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother, out of pure indulgence, took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently seized me by the middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke my neck, if the mother had not held her apron under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child’s waist: but all in vain; so that she was forced to apply the last remedy by giving it suck. I must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast, which I cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious reader an idea of its bulk, shape, and colour. It stood prominent six feet, and could not be less than sixteen in circumference. The nipple was about half the bigness of my head, and the hue both of that and the dug, so varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous: for I had a near sight of her, she sitting down, the more conveniently to give suck, and I standing on the table. This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured.>>

[sillyworm 2]

The radio jets in the jets link just blow my mind.They have traveled such great distances.What exactly causes the dissipation/expansion at the ends?

[Spif]

if the blast come from the "+", why is the edge of the cavity concave to it?

My guess is it is a turbulent jet that is blasting toward us but off axis a bit, maybe 30 degrees. As the jet blasts into the local medium, it balloons out in turbulent eddy's that expand radially away from the line of the jet. Perhaps we are seeing the terminal zone extended some distance away from the black hole in our direction and offset from our line of sight to the black hole because the jet is angled a bit away from us.

Imagine a knight pointing a mace at your knees. Take a picture of that. Then draw a dotted line around the ball of his mace. You would draw an arc much like that seen in the picture relative to the knight's face.

[Ann]

The Ophiuchus galaxy cluster has z=0.028, which means the distance is about 380 million light years.

380 light-years is pretty close, cosmologically speaking.

• Even 380 MILLION light-years is pretty close, cosmotologically speaking:

Million shmillion, who cares? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ann