Credit: John White
Black Hole Tempest in a Petri Dish
The Perseus cluster of galaxies is one of the most massive gravitationally-bound objects in known the Universe. It contains thousands of galaxies, all of which are embedded in a massive, hot intracluster cloud of extremely hot gas, heated by the motions of the cluster galaxies, capture and collision of smaller external galaxies with the cluster, and by outpourings of energy from a supermassive black hole residing near the cluster center. A titanic outburst from this black hole ages ago generated sounds waves rumbling through the intercluster medium with a pitch 57 octaves below the middle A note on a piano. This black hole has a deep basso profundo voice, well beyond the range of human hearing. The waves produced by the eruption of this supermassive black hole generate strong, X-ray emitting shocks. These shocks have been studied in great detail by the high-resolution cameras on the Chandra X-ray Observatory, giving us a picture of what the waves look like in space. Raising the pitch of the waves a few hundred quadrillion times brings the sound within the range of human hearing, giving us some idea of how they sound . Photographer John White played this audio through a speaker, on which he placed a petri dish full of water, and photographed the result. The resulting wave pattern, shown above, mimics the waves produced by the black hole outburst in Perseus, though on a much more understandable scale. This beautiful, haunting image won the 2023 Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation.
Published: October 16, 2023
<
HEA Dictionary ● Archive
● Search HEAPOW
● Other Languages
● HEAPOW on Facebook
● Download all Images
● Education ● HEAD
>
Each week the HEASARC
brings you new, exciting and beautiful images from X-ray and Gamma ray
astronomy. Check back each week and be sure to check out the HEAPOW archive!
Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Monday, 26-Feb-2024 17:36:05 EST