The RGB (Red Green Blue image) of the cluster. Red color shows optical radiation, Green shows Radio and Blue color shows X-rays emission. Credit: Chandra X-Ray Observatory
The discovery by a physics doctoral student at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) of the 2nd-strongest merger shock in clusters of galaxies ever observed has generated excitement that is opening doors to further scientific exploration. Sarthak Dasadia discovered the very strong shock in the merging galaxy cluster Abell 655 using observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The shock to the north of this cluster is second in strength only to the Bullet Cluster shock.
The shock is traveling with an astonishing speed of 2,700km/s, 3X the local speed of sound in the cluster. By comparison, NASA’s Juno spacecraft in 2013 became the fastest human-made object when it was slingshot around Earth toward Jupiter at a relatively pedantic 40km/s. “Studying mergers of galaxy clusters has proven to be crucial to our understanding of how such large scale objects form and evolve,” says Dasadia. Shocks provide unique opportunities to study high-energy phenomena in the intra-cluster medium – the hot plasma between galaxies.
Already, scientists are targeting shocks in galaxy clusters to study dark matter, the magnetic field in the intracluster space, particle acceleration and energy transfer in the intracluster medium.
The universe is populated with galaxy clusters that are relaxed and unrelaxed. The relaxed ones are mellow – they’ve been around a lot longer, have seen lots of past mergers and really aren’t dynamically active. It’s the unrelaxed clusters like Abell 665 that are good candidates to study merger features such as shocks and turbulence. They do not have a very well-defined boundary around them.
When the undefined boundaries of massive clusters of galaxies 3 million light-years across are drawn together in a slow-motion collision, their cold cores and surrounding hot gases are disrupted into shock waves and gas fronts of various temperatures. “When two cold cores collide, they may create a shock of heated gas,” Dasadia says. “Such mergers are actually among the most energetic events in the universe, other than the Big Bang itself.”
He was able to measure the velocity of the collision and the dynamics of what is happening in it – or rather, what was happening in it. It took 3.2 billion years for the light in the observations to reach Earth, so the events all happened that far back in time. Dynamic observations included the energy in the collision, the gas movement, and measurements of the discrepancy between the visible and dark matter involved.
http://www.uah.edu/news/research/second-strongest-shock-wave-found-in-merging-galaxy-clusters
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