Astronomers have spotted a pair of exotic features believed to be the aftermath of a colossal cosmic smackdown — not between two galaxies, but two groups of galaxies.
These glowing arcs of radio energy are known as “radio relics,” faint clouds resulting from powerful shockwaves surging through hot gas that fills the space amid a galaxy cluster.
The cluster, PSZ2 G181.06+48.47, is billions of light-years from Earth, but its image is less forgettable than its name. Using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the Very Large Array in New Mexico, a team of researchers spotted the arcs flanking the cluster like giant parentheses. The distance between the punctuation is an estimated 11 million light-years — about 100 times the span of the Milky Way.
That makes their separation a record holder — “the largest known to date,” according to a paper published on the discovery in The Astrophysical Journal.
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