The researchers witnessed something bizarre: one galaxy shooting a beam of radiation directly into another, disrupting its ability to form new stars.
“The idea that galaxy mergers give rise to quasars has long been proposed, mainly supported by statistical studies of host galaxy morphologies,” Noterdaeme added.
That energy is shooting straight into the other galaxy like a lance, slicing through clouds of gas and dust.
But the galaxy with the quasar isn’t just chipping away at the other—it’s also transforming itself.
ESO’s X-shooter scrutinized the quasar’s light, helping the researchers understand how the radiation affected the other galaxy.
Two galaxies are engaged in a battle that has been going on for billions of years in the chilly, far-off regions of the universe. An astronomical team recently discovered that the battle is unfair because one of the galaxies is piercing the other with a quasar, seriously impeding its development.
The team used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and Chile’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe the interaction, which they have named the “cosmic joust.”. The scientists saw something strange: a galaxy aimed a radiation beam straight at another, preventing it from producing new stars. A front-row seat to some of the most extreme intergalactic violence the universe has to offer is provided by the team’s findings, which were published today in Nature.
The light in the photos took 11 billion years to reach us because the interaction is so far away. The cosmic conflagration looks exactly like it did when the universe was only 18% as old as it is today. In the image above, the galaxies appear to be inert and plain, but in reality, they are speeding at over 311 miles per second (500 kilometers per second) toward one another.
Pasquier Noterdaeme, a CNRS researcher at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and co-lead author of the paper, emailed Gizmodo to say, “We found a quasar—probably caused by the merging of two galaxies—that is actively changing the gas structure in its companion galaxy.”. “There has long been a theory that galaxy mergers produce quasars, primarily backed by statistical analyses of host galaxy morphologies,” Noterdaeme continued. We were able to observe the two galaxies in action. “”.
The group discovered that areas of the other galaxy were being disturbed by radiation from the quasar, an active galactic core driven by a supermassive black hole. Similar to a lance, that energy is piercing through gas and dust clouds and shooting directly into the other galaxy. The researchers claim that because of the disruption, the areas are most likely too small to produce new stars; in other words, the galaxy that created the quasar essentially prevented its rival from producing new light.
The study’s co-lead author, Sergei Balashev, a researcher at the Ioffe Institute in Russia, said in an ESO release, “We see for the first time the effect of a quasar’s radiation directly on the internal structure of the gas in an otherwise regular galaxy.”.
However, the galaxy that has the quasar is changing itself in addition to eroding the other. Gas is directed toward the quasar’s central black hole by the interaction between the galaxies as they pass one another, preparing it for more intense eruptions.
Because of ALMA’s high resolution, astronomers were able to see that the light source in deep space was actually two galaxies, whereas prior observations had made the closely spaced objects appear as a single entity. This made the unique interaction visible. The quasar’s light was examined by ESO’s X-shooter, which gave the researchers insight into how the radiation impacted the other galaxy.
