 |
|
This
2009 handout image provided by NASA is a composite image from a
number of telescopes, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which
shows a space blob in both optical and infrared light. The blob is
the yellow mass of gas. Inside it is an adolescent galaxy in white.
The red spots are galaxies seen in the infrared spectrum.
|
WASHINGTON - Mysterious space blobs aren't
infant galaxies as astronomers once thought. Scientists say they mostly
consist of galaxies going through puberty, all hot and bothered.
A new study using NASA's Chandra X-Ray
Observatory and other space and ground telescopes comes up with an
explanation for these high-energy glowing blobs that have been observed for
about a decade. Astronomers looked at 29 of these gaseous blobs in one
distant area of the universe, dating back to more than 11 billion years ago.
One theory was that they were young galaxies
cooling off. But the new research says they are hot and chaotic with gas
halos, growing supermassive black holes and about to stabilize. The blobs
are the adolescent galaxies and the hydrogen gas, leftover from their
creation.
Study lead author James Geach of Durham
University in England said in an e-mail that the reason chaos is occurring
in the blobs "is due to the violent processes occurring in the
galaxies, black hole growth, starbursts, mergers. They're having a final
'tantrum' before they're done growing and then 'passively' evolve to the
present day.
"These could be the signal of galaxies
coming of age," Geach said later in a telephone news conference.
The research published this month in the
Astrophysical Journal "is very exciting" and emphasizes the
importance of black holes in the evolutions of galaxies, said Baron Martin
Rees, England's royal astronomer who was not involved in the research.
The growth of the interior black holes are
related to the growth of the galaxies.
But these "blobs" are special
cases. It is unlikely that our Milky Way galaxy went through this process
billions of years ago, Rees said. The Milky Way is too small. The black
holes in the middle of the galaxies that are part of these blobs are at
least 300 times more massive than the black hole inside our galaxy, he said.
___
On the Net
Chandra X-Ray Observatory: http://chandra.nasa.gov
|
