Sunday, April 22, 2007

Black Holes Produce Enormous Gas Cloud

A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might have been formed by several super-massive black holes. The plasma cloud, might also be the source of mysterious cosmic rays that permeate our universe. The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away, and is spread across a vast region of space thought to contain several galaxies with supermassive black holes, or active galactic nuclei (AGN), embedded at their centers. The cloud might be evidence that AGNs convert and transfer their enormous gravitational energy, by a yet-unknown process, into magnetic fields and cosmic rays that spread across the universe. The new finding could also help explain the unwanted and confusing “noise” scientists observe in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is a ubiquitous radiation in the universe that is said to be a remnant of the Big Bang.

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