Biggest Space Explosion Creates Giant Bubbles


The largest explosion ever seen in space reveals black holes to be more influential than expected, perhaps sometimes stifling star formation in a galaxy while gobbling up trillions upon trillions of tons of gas.

The eruption has been ongoing for some 100 million years, astronomers said Wednesday.

The outburst is orchestrated by a supermassive black hole that anchors a distant galaxy sitting amid a tight cluster of galaxies. The black hole has blown two huge bubbles into the galaxy, shoving aside a colossal amount of gas equal to the mass of a trillion Suns, or more than all the stars of our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Each bubble is many times bigger than those seen in previous studies.

Here’s what happens: While the black hole feasts, a lot of incoming gas is ejected violently back into the galaxy along the black hole’s axis of rotation. Two high-speed jets of superheated gas carve out the ever-expanding bubbles.

The scene was captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array.