Two clusters of galaxies contain hundreds of billions of stars about to collide

Observing clusters of galaxies collides and merges helps scientists understand more about the process of forming objects in the universe.

Scientists used images from X-ray telescopes and radio observatories to observe the shockwave that came out when two galaxies 1E 2216.0-0401 and 1E 2215.7-0404 began to merge, IFL Science on June 25 reported.

Illustrated hot air zone (blue) is created when two clusters of galaxies collide.(Photo: IFL Science).

The galaxy cluster contains a lot of intergalactic gases. This amount of gas spreads millions of light years and is often very hot. When galaxy clusters collide, the gas from each cluster is compressed and heated to extremely high temperatures.

The scientific community has observed the merging shocks but unlike this time. The shocks move perpendicular to the axis, facing outward along the equatorial plane of the merger."Two galactic clusters show the first clear evidence of this type of merger ," said Liyi Gu, the lead author of the study, from RIKEN National Science Institute (Japan).

"The impact of creating a 100 million degree hot air belt between two galactic clusters , can spread to their borders, even further. Therefore, the observed shock has a great impact on development. of galaxy clusters as well as large structures in the universe, " explained Liyi Gu.

Galaxy cluster collisions can take billions of years to complete. Therefore, in order to understand the overall picture, scientists must observe images of many different collisions. This is also a very difficult reason to observe the first phase of a merger.

" eROSITA , the sky survey project with X-ray telescope expected to launch this year, will help detect more similar mergers. Two other projects are XRISM and Athena, which also allow us to understand. adding the role of merging shocks in the history of extraterrestrial objects , " said Hiroki Akamatsu, co-author of the study.

The galaxy cluster is the largest gravitationally bound object in the universe, each cluster can contain hundreds of billions of stars. They are very important in understanding how galaxies change and evolve or how matter is distributed in the universe.

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