For decades, astronomers' enthusiasm has inflamed a picture that reveals the mystery of the strange galaxy "X"

Shady Abdel Hafez

A joint South American African research team managed to capture the most detailed image yet of the X galaxy, which is about 800 million light years away from us. The new details of the image enabled scientists to understand the secret of the strange shape this galaxy takes in the sky.

To achieve this accuracy, the research team used the South African Radio Observatory "MeerKAT" located outside the town of Carnarvon, north of the capital, Cape Town, which consists of 36 meters according to the width of each 12 meters.

Cosmic
radio galaxy jets are a very active type of galaxy, which is characterized by the release of strong radiation jets in the radio waves range from the electromagnetic spectrum (hence the name).

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, also fires similar radio jets, but they are less dense by a wide margin. In the case of the Milky Way, this radiation emits a distance of 50 thousand light years, while in the case of the galaxy "X" it extends to 10 million light years away from the center of the galaxy.

The main reason for the launch of these radio jets from the galaxies is the giant black holes located in its center, where the material is crowded with intense density to enter the black hole, and this causes the rays of speed to move close to the speed of light from the top and bottom of the black hole, which makes a pair of high jets energy.

Map of the Evolution of the Universe
Since its discovery six decades ago, the radio galaxy "X" - also called "PKS 2014-55" - has secretly inflamed many research teams.

In addition to being in the sky the English letter X, the galaxy contains a pair of radio jets, not one pair as is usual in this type of galaxy: the first is long, makes the shape of the letter X, and the second is very small, making two small bubbles around the galaxy.

The hypotheses explaining the secret of this phenomenon ranged from the fact that the galaxy contains two black holes together at the center of each of them launching a pair of jets, or that the black hole in the center of the galaxy somehow reversed its direction and created new radio jets next to the fading old one.

But the latest observations from "Mercat" confirm a third hypothesis, which is that a small part of the huge radio jet material emitted from the black hole has retreated over time because of the galaxy's attractiveness to it, making two small lobes around it, leaving the rest to travel in the intergalactic space.

This new detection is a successful test of the accuracy of "Mercat", which enters as a major actor in a huge project called "Map of the Universe Evolution" (EMU), during which the South African Observatory will examine 70 million radio galaxies, with the aim of drawing the most accurate possible scenario for the evolution of the universe from the moment of the explosion. The great.