A black hole is moving at supersonic speed

Italian astronomers have obtained a detailed picture of a massive black hole moving at high speed towards the core of the cluster of galaxies 3C 129 .

The finding has been made possible with the new Sardinia Radio Telescope ( SRT ) , a giant satellite dish. Researchers at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics ( INAF ) and the University of Cagliari publish their results in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The black hole and its galaxy are on a collision course with a cluster of nearby galaxies , driven by gravitational forces generated by the high concentration of dark matter , galaxies and hot gas, as stated Thursday Europa Press.

Radio images reveal that the black hole is actively accreting material. Some of this material is not falling into the black hole and is ejected into two streams of plasma that fuse to form a spectacular throughout much of the size of the galaxy same queue.

" The phenomenon is like the wake of a jet aircraft ( ... ) By comparing observations SRT with other radio telescopes , we have obtained for the first time a map of the antiquity of this radio source , to conclude that the black hole is moving at supersonic speed, "says Matteo Murgia , INAF researcher and lead author of the study.

In the Earth's atmosphere , the speed of sound is about 1200 kilometers per hour, but in the atmosphere of the cluster of galaxies surrounding the black hole , an ultra gas rarefied reaches a temperature of tens of millions of degrees Kelvin , speed sound is as high as 4 million kilometers per hour. The black hole is traveling at a speed of up to 1.5 times this limit.

" Another peculiarity of this black hole continues Matteo Murgia- is the presence of a shock wave in front of the galaxy , similar to those associated with combat aircraft. With some surprise , we found that the speed of the black hole we measure is exactly what previously theorized to explain the presence of the shock wave . "