A galaxy as particle accelerator
Monday, July 6, 2009 - 10:14
in Astronomy & Space
It is one of the largest among the giants: With two to three billion times the mass of our sun, the galaxy Messier 87 dominates the Virgo cluster. A supermassive black hole exists in the centre of this galaxy. So called jets (gigantic plasma flows) shoot out from the vicinity of the black hole at close to light speed. Scientists - among others from the Max Planck Institutes for Nuclear Physics and Physics - have observed, simultaneously in gamma and radio frequencies, this active galactic core region. Thereby they discovered that the elementary particles are accelerated to extremely high energy levels in closest proximity to the black hole...