Galactic UFO
A UFO has been spotted in a galaxy more than two billion light-years away — an ultra-fast outflow. It’s a “wind” created by a disk of hot gas around a supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s heart. And soon, it may sweep away all the gas and dust for making new stars.
PDS 456 is in Serpens Cauda — the tail of the serpent. The constellation is a third of the way up the southeastern sky at nightfall. The galaxy is far too faint to see without a telescope.
Even so, it’s the brightest “quasar” within billions of light-years. It’s powered by a black hole that’s a billion times the mass of the Sun. Gas and dust fall toward the black hole, forming a wide disk around it. Material in the disk is heated to extreme temperatures, so it emits a lot of radiation and charged particles. They produce the UFO — a heavy wind that blows at a quarter of the speed of light, and carries as much energy as a trillion Suns.
The wind blows in every direction. And it acts like a galaxy-wide broom — it sweeps gas
Comments