from our borders Solar System Near exploding stars, astrophysical tremors can accelerate particles to relativistic speeds and generate high-energy radiation. Now astronomers may have discovered a new source gamma rayswhich are produced where extremely fast flows of interstellar gas flow.
Outflows from outer space
when supermassive black holes piling Important, they can generate strong outflows in the form of narrow relativistic jets or wide-angle winds known as ultrafast outflows (UFOs). UFOs can reach light speeds and disrupt the outer regions of the galaxy, sending gas into intergalactic space and affecting evolution over long periods of time.
If a UFO flying in interstellar space generates shocks with which particles can be accelerated, it must generate gamma rays with a power of 1033 joules per second, but so far astronomers have only discovered it in X ray. The enormous distances between galaxies are working to our disadvantage: from our terrestrial viewpoint, a gathering area of about 8,400 square meters would capture a single photon with an energy greater than gigaelectronvolts per hour from a typical UFO.
Gathering data in gamma rays
To detect these UFOs under gamma rays, an international group of scientists used data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), an instrument on the space probe. Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. A single UFO is about 2.5 times lighter than the darkest source detected by Fermi LAT, but the team was hoping to get a signal by combining observations of multiple galaxies in which UFOs were detected with X-ray wavelengths.
The team addressed this problem by modeling the common gamma spectrum. For each set of model parameters, a test statistic was calculated – a quantity describing how likely the data would be to obtain if the emission from the source matches the model under test. The higher the test statistic, the more likely the signal will be well described by the model. Pooled observations yielded a maximum test statistic of 30.1—which corresponds to 5.1-sigma detection.
dual control
Before announcing the authors success work They also analyzed the control sample to ensure that the emissions they attributed to the foreign body were not coming from a different source. The team stacked 20 galaxies with X-ray distances and brightness levels similar to the UFO sample – but without previously detecting black hole winds – and looked for a signal in this data set. This analysis returned the maximum test statistic of 1.1, confirming that the signal was caused by outflows.
The detection of gamma-ray emissions from UFOs supports the theory that these massive outflows produce quakes, which are sites of particle acceleration. Although this work explores the remote galaxiesUFOs may have had a closer effect on us as well; The Fermi LAT team suggests that outflows from a supermassive black hole are inside Milky Way They can create enormous bubbles extending above and below our galaxy, which have previously been observed by Fermi and the eROSITA instrument.
Detail:
Agnieszka Nowak
more information:
Source: AAS
Pictured: winds from a supermassive black hole in the galaxy escaping into space. Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech
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