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from the just-demolition-work-for-the-intergalactic-superhighway dept.
Astronomers detect biggest explosion in the history of the Universe - ICRAR
Scientists studying a distant galaxy cluster have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the Universe since the Big Bang.
[...] 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 the event was extraordinarily energetic.
"We've seen outbursts in the centres of galaxies before but this one is really, really massive," she said.
"And we don't know why it's so big.
"But it happened very slowly—like an explosion in slow motion that took place over hundreds of millions of years."
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.
Lead author of the study Dr Simona Giacintucci, from the Naval Research Laboratory in the United States, said the blast was similar to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, which ripped the top off the mountain.
"The difference is that you could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster's hot gas," she said.
[...] The discovery was made using four telescopes; NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA's XMM-Newton, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India.
Journal Reference:
Giacintucci, S., Markevitch, M., Johnston-Hollitt, M., et al. Discovery of a giant radio fossil in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, (DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab6a9d)
With apologies to Marvin the Martian:
Earth-shattering kaboom? Nope, that's not it.
Sun-shattering kaboom? Think larger.
Galaxy-shattering kaboom? Still way too small.
Galaxy-Cluster-shattering Kaboom! Now you've got it!
Don't Panic!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 01 2020, @05:06PM (1 child)
Well, nuclear fission is a matter of gathering a certain amount of "special mass" together such that it triggers itself into a mass-energy conversion, and fusion is the same thing, only slightly more difficult on a planetary surface due to the compression required.
It's possible that two galactic core black holes collided and that's all that we're witnessing.
If it is an intelligently designed mass-energy conversion, it could involve something clever like throwing a small high spin black hole into a galactic core with opposite spin - or something that we don't yet have the understanding to conceive (so: magic, but not after you know how it works.)
If you're intelligent (and capable) enough to make such a thing happen, it would seem more likely that it would be sent by Milky Way-ians to pre-emptively strike the Andromedans than it would for Milky Way-ians to use it on their home galaxy. But, then, we can't even manage to keep our own populations from rioting, so who knows - all conceivable societal structures and levels of self-destructive behavior likely exist somewhere in the Universe. Also, for all we know, such a thing was detonated in the core of the Milky Way 90,000 years ago, and the 2001 style genetic tweak given to the Neanderthals was just a perverse betting game among long lived aliens who want to see if we will evolve our way out of this trap before the shockwave arrives.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 01 2020, @06:23PM
The mass-energy content [wikipedia.org] of a gram of matter is roughly 10^14 J (Joules). Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated released roughly the energy content of 2 kg. The Sun's power output is roughly four million metric tons equivalent of energy per second. Typical energy release of a supernova is roughly 10^24 metric tons equivalent, which is also roughly the estimated lifetime output of the Sun - which in turn is about a thousandth of the mass of the Sun (in other words, over it's lifetime, the Sun effectively converts 0.1% of its mass into energy). The largest hypernovas release on the order of 0.1 solar masses as energy. None of what I have mentioned so far makes much of a dent in a galaxy like the Milky Way (which is comparable to the doughnut galaxy in terms of size).
On that page, the largest such energy event [wikipedia.org] is the estimate of energy released by a 10 billion solar mass black hole (estimate of course) over 100 million years. It's thought to be about 5 million solar masses of energy released and apparently hasn't disrupted the center of its galaxy (though that would a galaxy much more massive than the Milky Way).
So anyway, my point is twofold. First, disruption of a galaxy on this scale requires massive energy. Second, in the case of your nuclear bomb example, the mass of the bomb is much greater than the mass of the bomb which would be converted to energy when it is detonated. It's reasonable to expect the same to hold of any such galaxy-scale weapon. So in order for deployers of such a weapon to survive its use, they have to be well away from the weapon by the time it goes off. Either it's made onsite or it's moved there. The latter requires substantial propulsion. We know of no way to do that which doesn't leave evidence of its use.