Forget Trump vs Musk, two galaxies are about to collide in space
While Donald Trump and Elon Musk beef continues, there is something even bigger happening in the cosmos.Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with other telescopes, has captured a rare cosmic event: two massive galaxy clusters that collided about a billion years ago are now on course to crash into each other again.The system, known as PSZ2 G181, lies approximately 2.8 billion light-years from Earth.advertisement
Galaxy clusters are among the largest structures in the universe, consisting of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, vast amounts of superheated gas, and invisible dark matter, all bound together by gravity.
Photo: Nasa
PSZ2 G181 is a lower-mass system compared to other known colliding clusters, making this event particularly unusual and valuable for study.Earlier radio observations by the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) in the Netherlands revealed bracket-shaped structures—likely shock fronts—on the outskirts of the system.These shock fronts are similar to sonic booms created when jets break the sound barrier and are thought to have formed from the initial collision's disruption of gas.advertisementSince that first impact, the shock fronts have traveled outward and are now separated by about 11 million light-years, the largest such separation ever observed.New composite images combine X-ray data from Nasa's Chandra (shown in purple) and ESA's XMM-Newton (blue) with LOFAR's radio data (red) and optical images from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). These observations reveal three shock fronts aligned along the collision axis, which scientists interpret as early signs of the clusters' impending second encounter.After their initial pass, the two clusters slowed down and have begun moving back toward each other, setting the stage for another massive cosmic collision. Researchers are still determining the exact mass of each cluster, but the total mass is less than that of other colliding systems, making PSZ2 G181 an exceptional case.This discovery, detailed in a series of papers led by Andra Stroe of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, offers a unique window into the dynamics of galaxy cluster collisions and the growth of large-scale cosmic structures.
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