Astronomers discover powerful cosmic double whammy

Astronomers have discovered two of the most powerful phenomena in the universe, a supermassive black hole and the collision of giant galaxy clusters about 2 billion light years from Earth.
It was discovered combining data from India’s Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes.

Key Facts

• These two phenomenon combined to create a stupendous cosmic particle accelerator. This was the first time, scientists found cosmic combination in a pair of colliding galaxy clusters.
• It was found from the two colliding galaxy clusters called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412 located about two billion light years from Earth.
• These two clusters are very massive and each weighs about a quadrillion or a million billion times the mass of the Sun of our solar system.

About Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT)

GMRT is an indigenous project set up by Pune based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA). It has been designed for investigating a variety of radio astrophysical problems, ranging from nearby Solar system to the edge of observable Universe. Astronomers from all over the world use this telescope regularly to observe many different astronomical objects such as galaxies, pulsars, supernovae, HII regions and Sun and solar winds.

Month: Current Affairs - January, 2017