Vintage Girl
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Joined: 05 Nov 2006
Posts: 3434
Location: Essex, England
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 Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 12:35 am Post subject: Hubble solves Ancient Mystery |
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http://www.virginmedia.com/digital/news/hubble-photos.php
| Quote: | Spectacular new images from deep space have helped Cambridge University scientists unravel a 100 million-year-old mystery.
The Hubble Space Telescope pictures show delicate filaments of gas radiating from the centre of a galaxy in the Perseus Cluster, 235 million light years away.
For years astronomers have puzzled about these dramatic structures in the galaxy NGC 1275.
No-one has been able to explain why the filaments have not collapsed under powerful gravitational forces.
From the new images, scientists have now learned that the filaments owe their survival to strong magnetic fields.
The study reported in the journal Nature also provides important clues about black holes.
The filaments are a by-product of a super-massive black hole at the core of NGC 1275.
Just one of the filament threads contains around a million times the mass of the Sun. The structures stretch out for distances of up to 20,000 light years.
Professor Andy Fabian, from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, said: "We can see that the magnetic fields are crucial for these complex filaments, both for their survival and integrity.
"Without them, these beautiful structures would be unable to withstand their surroundings and would collapse into stars." |
I find this kind of thing really fascinating!
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