I recently covered the story of how researchers have discovered the remnants of a galaxy that didn’t couldn’t quite get its act together, never fully forming. Now, I bring you a story from the opposite end of the spectrum.
Using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, an international research team has found a galaxy cluster so hot and so mature that, according to existing cosmological models, it shouldn’t exist at all.
The cluster is known as SPT2349-56, and dates back roughly 12 billion years. That’s just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. At that point in cosmic history, galaxy clusters were supposed to still be figuring themselves out.
Instead, this one had its act together early. Its gas is at least five times hotter than theories predict, and in some cases, hotter than clusters found in the modern universe. This thing is burning hot, it’s full of energy, and it has been for a long time.
Astronomers Found an Object So Hot It Shouldn’t Exist
Even the researchers didn’t believe it at first, as they explain in a statement released on the University of British Columbia website. Lead author Dazhi Zhou admitted the signal seemed “too strong to be real.”
Months of verification later, the data held up. The cluster’s core alone spans about half a million light-years, roughly the size of the Milky Way’s halo, while forming stars more than 5,000 times faster.
To put it simply, and as unscientifically as possible, that’s crazy.
The likely culprit behind this early excess energy is a trio of supermassive black holes embedded in the cluster. Instead of passively sitting around while gravity slowly heated the surrounding gas, these black holes appear to have been aggressively pumping energy into their environment. That’s turbocharging the cluster’s development.
If all of this is confirmed, it suggests that black holes have been actively shaping the early structure of these clusters a lot earlier than previously thought.
Astronomers have traditionally believed that galaxy clusters are heated up mainly through gravitational collapse. Gas falls inward and compresses over time. This discovery hints at something much bigger going on.
That something? An additional, much more explosive mechanism at work that’s now forcing scientists to rethink how the largest structures in the universe might have come together.
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