(ORDO NEWS) — Radio astronomers have built a map of the shock wave 60 times the size of the Milky Way. Astronomers have taken a picture of a sunspot that is larger than Earth. The Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 took a picture of two small regular spheres of translucent glass.
A disaster for a billion years
The galaxy cluster Abell 3667 is located about 730 million light-years from Earth. It contains over 550 galaxies. The cluster consists of two large clusters. And these clusters collide. It was not possible to consider this collision in detail for a long time.
An international team of radio astronomers has detected a giant shock wave from both sides of the cluster. It is visible only in the radio wave range. Using the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa, the researchers builtmap of both components of the shock wave.
Its size is 60 times larger than the Milky Way. According to the researchers, the shock wave originated about 1 billion years ago when two clusters of galaxies that now make up Abell 3667 collided. Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe.
When two such structures merge, they release the largest amount of energy in a single event since the Big Bang. But such a merger lasts for billions of years.
Sunspot the size of the Earth
Started working February 23Inouye’s largest solar telescope. It is located on the Haleakala volcano on the island of Maui, Hawaii. This telescope will allow you to take pictures of the Sun with a resolution of up to 20 km. Given that the diameter of the Sun is 1.4 million km, this is a very high resolution.
One of the first pictures Inouye took was of a sunspot the size of the Earth. This is the first time astronomers have seen such a detailed image. Sunspots are temporary regions of strong magnetic fields. Solar flares result from the breaking and reconnection of magnetic field lines.
The first study chosen for the telescope is a study of magnetic reconnection, where the solar magnetic field lines break and reconnect. In this case, a huge one is released and an ejection occurs in the solar corona.
Moon beads
Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 discovered two small regular spheres of translucent glass. The size of these beads is 15 and 25 mm in diameter. They were captured by the rover’s panoramic camera. Geologists working with the lunar rover have come up with a hypothesis explaining the formation of such atypical objects for the Moon.
At one time, the Moon was seismically active, and volcanic glass was formed during eruptions. During a meteorite impact, it could melt, and its splashes froze in the form of translucent beads. On the Moon, such balls have already been found, but usually they are about a millimeter in diameter.
But the Apollo 16 mission found a 40mm glass ball. Scientists believe that there should be many such balls on the surface of the Moon, but they are most often covered with a layer of dust.
The found beads, apparently, were on the surface due to the impact of a meteorite, whose crater is located nearby. The impact scattered the dust and the balls were on the surface. And Yutu-2 drove past and took a picture as a keepsake.
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