NE NEWS SERVICE
PERTH, FEB 29
The biggest explosion in the universe after the Big Bang has been discovered by scientists studying a distant galaxy cluster. The blast took place as a result of a supermassive black hole at the Centre of a galaxy hundreds of millions of light years away.
It released five times more energy than the previous record holder. Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, said that the event was extraordinarily energetic. “We have seen outbursts in the Centres of galaxies before but this one is really, really massive,” said Johnston-Hollitt.
“We do not know why it is so big. But it happened very slowly — like an explosion in slow motion that took place over hundreds of millions of years,” she added. The explosion occurred in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, about 390 million light-years from Earth. It was so powerful it punched a cavity in the cluster plasma – the super-hot gas surrounding the black hole. Courtesy: ANI
