The universe never stops surprising us. Wherever we put our eyes, it is difficult to find anything, as if the space vacuum was particularly full. Lately, a study published on November 28, 2024 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society revealed the discovery of a cosmic monster, a gigantic radioogalaxy located at 1.44 billion-light-light from the earth, which posed some concerns to scientists.
Article initially published in January 2025
What is a radioogalaxy?
To understand this, you must first look at this on the side of the discovery of such a cosmic structure. Indeed, one can highlight a galaxy in two different ways:
- By turning an astronomical telescope towards the space vacuum so that it can capture the light
- By orienting a radiotelescope which could capture the radios waves emitted by said Radiogalaxy
Inkathazo, the recent radioogalaxy discovered by the Meerkata radiotelescope of 64 branches located in South Africa, therefore saw its existence brought to our attention thanks to very powerful broadcasts of radio waves.
A gigantic cosmic monster
Do you find that our galaxy is large? Well, from our point of view of small humans, yes, it is. To cross it right through, it would be necessary to travel a distance of 105,700 light years.
It's huge, but already in front of our nearest neighbor, Andromeda who is 220,000 light years, it's twice as much as possible.
GOOD. Even if it is difficult to imagine such distances, now imagine that Inkathazo is a radioogalaxy whose plasma jets that escape are long, from one end to the other, from 3.3 million light years. In other words, we could bring our galaxy 32 times within this cosmic monster.
It is enormous and if we can say that we would therefore be faced with the greatest galaxy in the known universe, this would not be the case. Indeed, this title returns, for the moment, to Alcyonea which covers no less than 16 million light years. We are really little.
“” ” We do not yet understand most of the physics »
If this discovery has something to impress, it was not done without “problem”. And you just have to translate the name of the radioogalaxy recently discovered to realize it.
“” “We have nicknamed this giant radioGalaxy “Inkathazo” which means “problem” in Zulu and Xhosa, because it was difficult to understand the physics of what is happening there.“Said the main author of the study, Kathleen Charlton, in a press release from the National Research Foundation.
One of the points that raised questions among scientists was above all the shape of plasma jets escaping from radioogalaxy. Indeed, “Instead of stretching straight from one end to the other, one of the jets is bent.”Explains the researcher in the press release.
But although Inkathazo posed some concerns to his discoverers, the researchers do not forget that they have in front of them “A unique opportunity to study giant radioogalaxies physics in extraordinary details. These results question the existing models and suggest that we do not yet understand most of the complex physics of plasmas involved in these extreme galaxies.”Concludes Dr. Kshitij Thurat, co -author of the study.
Source : Ifls / National Research Foundation
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