The galaxy takes the place of many 9.2 billion light-years from Earth

A galaxy distant and lonely, as it were, boldly and assimilated all its former galaxies comrades, open Chandra X-ray Observatory belonging POT and the Gemini International Observatory.

galaxy unexpectedly lonely is about 9.2 billion light-years from Earth and contains a quasar, hole supermassive black trailing gas in the center galaxy and controls the powerful jets of matter observed in radio waves. Wednesday of this galaxyknown as 3С 297appears to have the key characteristics of a cluster galaxies, huge structures that often contain hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. However, 3C 297 she is one.

“Looks like we have a band galaxies which lacks almost all galaxies”, – says Valentina Missaglia from the University of Turin (Italy), who led the study. “We expected to see at least a dozen galaxies the size of the Milky Way, and yet we only see one.

one instead of many

Missaglia and his colleagues note two key features of the cluster galaxies according to x-ray data Chandra. First, they show that galaxy solitaria is surrounded by a huge amount of gas with a temperature of tens of millions of degrees, which is usually observed in clusters galaxies.

Second, the supermassive black hole’s jet created an intense X-ray source about 140,000 light-years away, meaning it penetrated the gas surrounding the black hole. galaxy. The third feature of clusters galaxies which has 3С 297previously reported in the Carl G. Jansky Very Large Array data is that one of the radio jets is bent, indicating interaction with the environment.

Despite the presence of these important characteristics of the cluster galaxiesdata from the Missaglia group from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii showed that none of the 19 galaxies which appear around 3C 297 in the optical image of Gemini and have accurate distance measurements are actually the same distance as galaxy lonely.

“The question is what happened to all these galaxiessaid co-author Juan Madrid of the University of Texas at the Rio Grande. “We believe that the gravitational pull of the only great galaxy coupled with the interaction between galaxies was too strong and they merged with the great galaxy”. Apparently, for these galaxies resistance was futile.”

Researchers believe that 3С 297 is no longer a cluster galaxies, but “fossil group”. This is the final stage galaxy that crawls and merges with others galaxies. While many other fossil groups have already been discovered, this one is 9.2 billion light-years away. (Previous records for fossil groups were 4.9 and 7.9 billion light-years away.)

“It can be difficult to explain how the universe could have created this system just 4.6 billion years after the Big Bang,” said co-author Mischa Schirmer of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. “This doesn’t break our understanding of cosmology, but it does begin to push the boundaries of how quickly and galaxies like cumulus clouds galaxies”.

The authors do not rule out the presence galaxies midgets around 3С 297but their presence would still not explain the absence galaxies larger than the Milky Way. The closest examples are M87 in the Virgo Cluster, which has had large galactic companions for billions of years. However, 3C 297 will spend billions of years virtually alone.

New research published in journal Astrophysical journal. (Europe Press)

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