Chandra image suggests a traffic jam surrounds black hole

The Chandra X-ray image of Hydra A, a galaxy cluster that is 840 million light years from Earth

December 10, 1999
Web posted at: 2:04 p.m. EST (1904 GMT)

By Richard Stenger
CNN Interactive Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For years astronomers have puzzled over the fate of colossal quantities of gaseous matter thought to flow into the center of galaxy clusters, the largest objects in the universe.

New images snapped by NASA's Chandra X-ray space observatory of the Hydra A cluster, some 840 million light years from Earth, could shed light on that mystery, and provide crucial clues about the origin of galaxies, astronomers said.

Physicists had presumed large amounts of cooling gas must flow into the central regions of galaxy clusters, where they were thought to generate the birth of galaxies or hundreds of trillions of dim stars. But the missing matter has not turned up in examinations of the inner areas of the clusters.

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Scientists have tried to explain the matter discrepancy, but they "couldn't balance the books," said Wallace Tucker of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Until now.

The Chandra image of the Hydra A displays for the first time long snake-like strands of 35 million degree gas extending far from the center of the cluster.

An optical image of Hydra A

The structure suggests that the magnetic field of a central black hole produces violent explosions that eject the incoming matter.

Matter gravitates toward a black hole in such incredible quantities that it creates a celestial "traffic jam," Tucker said. There's such a rush to the center that "other things can happen. Matter can encounter material going the other way. Maybe a lane gets closed off, so material doesn't get in as fast as was thought."

Incoming matter spins rapidly as it approaches a central black hole, which creates intense magnetic and electric fields that repel the matter.

"It's a developing idea: Not everything falls into a black hole," Tucker said.

The X-ray image also reveals a bright wedge of hot multimillion-degree gas pushing into the heart of the cluster, an indication of the many complex forces at work there: magnetic fields, star formation, rotation and black holes.

"The first thing it shows is the universe is complicated," Tucker said. Galaxy forming is more complicated than we thought it was."

Chandra, launched in July, is expected remain functioning in orbit for five years.