Australia's National Science Agency Finds Two Dancing Ghosts Far Away, What Are They?
JAKARTA - A pair of 'dancing ghosts' have been spotted circling around two 'host' galaxies about a billion light years from Earth.
Researchers from Western Sydney University and CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, revealed that the terrifying figure was actually a cloud of electrons spewing out two supermassive black holes at the center of the galaxy.
The giant spectral cloud, named MCC 2130-538, was caught by galactic winds creating swirling figures.
The team hopes this discovery will allow them to reveal more about how black holes behave and what can happen in the space between two galaxies.
Western Sydney University and CSIRO, Australia's national science body, made a statement:
"When we first saw the 'dancing ghost', we had no idea what it was. After weeks of work, we discovered that we were seeing two 'host' galaxies, about a billion light years away.
At its center are two supermassive black holes, ejecting jets of electrons that are then bent into strange shapes by intergalactic winds.
But new discoveries always raise new questions and this one is no different. We still don't know where the wind comes from? Why so tangled? And what causes the radio emission stream?
"It may take more observation and modeling before we understand these things."
The dancing ghost was discovered through the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) project, which uses the new ASKAP telescope to analyze radio sources in outer space.
The ASKAP telescope is operated by CSIRO and is part of the Australian Telescope National Facility.
It uses new technology to achieve very high survey speeds, making it one of the best instruments in the world for mapping the sky at radio wavelengths.
Other objects and phenomena discovered so far as part of the EMU Project include the discovery of the mysterious Odd Radio Circles. This appears to be a gigantic ring of radio emission nearly a million light-years wide, surrounding distant galaxies.
'We even found surprises in places we thought we understood. Next to the well-studied galaxy IC5063, we found a radio giant galaxy, one of the largest known, whose existence was never even suspected,” said Norris.
Its supermassive black hole produces a beam of electrons nearly 5 million light-years long.
ASKAP is the only telescope in the world that can see the total of these faint emissions.