Vacume up a Galaxy, Nature Destroys Own Environment

One of the best things about modern astronomy is that we can "see" with our instruments a whole lot that our eyes could never see. This very cool new image from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, along with a radio image from the Very Large Array, shows the galaxy-altering power of the active supermassive black hole in the center of M87.

Known for a long time to be a powerful radio source, it was found to have a supermassive black hole that was feeding on surrounding gas. Although a few billion times the mass of the sun -- which is HUGE to us -- it is just a tiny fraction of the mass of the galaxy. And yet, its actions influence the entire galaxy, as well as the cluster around it.

Whereas the radio emission comes from jets of material that are flung away from the black hole's vicinity at speeds nearing that of light, the x-ray emission comes from the hot soup of particles that pervade the galactic cluster. These interact as the radio jets appear to blow "bubbles" or cavities into the x-ray gas. Putting the pieces together provided observational evidence of the physical link between the actions of the supermassive black hole and what is going on the in the rest of the galaxy.

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