Monthly Archives: February 2016

Seyfert galaxy IRAS17020+4544 located 800 million light years away.

Posted by P. LaViolette, February 8, 2016

A group of astronomers has observed an ultrafast wind of oxygen atoms blowing away from the active core of Seyfert galaxy IRAS17020+4544.  The wind was observed to be moving away from the galaxy’s active core at a velocity of 23,000 to 33,000 km/s, or at about 10% of the speed of light.  This galaxy is of particular interest because it has a shape similar to our own and a supermassive core of mass 5.9 X 10^6 solar masses, slightly more massive than our own Galactic core, Sgr A*.  Ultrafast winds had previously been identified in more massive elliptical galaxies.  This was the first time one has been found in a galaxy similar to our own.  This provides further confirmation for the reality of superwaves, a theory first proposed 33 years ago (LaViolette, 1983).  According to this theory these high velocity winds observed to exit from active nuclei would be driven by cosmic ray volleys propagating outward along radial trajectories.

Co-author Matteo Guainazzi states:

“Of course we cannot be sure, but our discovery implies that fast outflows like those found in IRAS17020+4544 may have once swept through our own Galaxy during one of these active phases… This possibility was not considered before, because this ‘feedback’ from X-ray winds was previously observed only in galaxies very different from the Milky Way.”

To correct Dr. Guainazzi’s misstatement, the possibility of fast outflows having swept through our Galaxy was indeed considered before back in 1983 based on a combination of Galactic, extragalactic, and geological evidence.  The results of this recent study by A. L. Longinotti et al. only confirms the conclusions already reached 33 years ago.

Longinotti et al. report that the wind entails a total mass loss rate of between 0.01 and 1 solar masses per year and comprises a kinetic energy of between 10^42 to 10^45 ergs/s.  By comparison in my 1983 study I had considered a Seyfert like cosmic ray outburst from the Milky Way’s core that had a luminosity of 10^48 ergs/s occurring about 12,000 to 14,000 years ago.  Hence if these cosmic rays were to transfer about 10^-5 of their energy to the interstellar medium, wind luminosities similar to those seen in IRAS17020+4544 would could have occurred in the Milky Way.  If anything, this finding of high velocity winds coming from active cores underlines the fact that active galactic cores are not black holes powered by matter accreted from their surroundings.  Because with such a strong wind, no matter would succeed in falling into the core.  Any nearby dust or cometary material would be vaporized and pushed outward.

A mass loss rate of 0.01 to 1 Msolar per year reported above is not that great when compared with the Milky Way’s core where in its current quiescent state a high velocity wind is seen to be carrying matter away at the rate of 0.02 to 0.03 solar masses per year.

For news about this finding consider these links:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/A_Milky_Way_twin_swept_by_an_ultra-fast_X-ray_wind
or
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-milky-twin-swept-ultra-fast-x-ray.html.

But do not be misled by the diagrams they use to illustrate their articles.  There is no evidence that this is just a polar wind.  Observations of other galaxies indicate that these winds are isotropic and hence propagate through the galaxy’s disc as well.

The supermassive core at the centre of the nearby galaxy NGC5195 (pictured at the top of the Whirlpool galaxy, the larger spiral galaxy) has been found to be ‘burping’ X-ray emitting blasts of hot gas. This has swept up the cooler hydrogen gas at the centre of the galaxy into two arcs shown in inset blue X-ray image.

Posted by P. LaViolette, February 5, 2016

The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) is another example of a galactic core fission event that resulted in the production of the dwarf satellite galaxy NGC 5195 which is seen at the upper left in the above diagram.  This pair are located quite close to us about 26 million light years away.  The conventional interpretation based on the standard big bang paradigm is that NGC 5195 was gravitationally captured by the Whirlpool galaxy.  However, the Whirlpool galaxy, with its distinctive spiral shape, exhibits a striking lack of tidal disruption.  Moreover its alignment with one of M51’s spiral arms cannot be passed off as just coincidence.  It is as if this spiral arm forms a trailing stellar bridge linking this daughter galaxy’s supermassive with its larger parent galaxy from whose center it emerged long, long ago.

Over the millions of years since its expulsion from M51’s core, the supermassive core at the center of NGC 5195 has apparently had a chance to expel large amounts of matter and spawn its own diminutive galaxy of stars.  Now, evidence has been found that NGC 5195 is indeed expelling matter and building up its own galactic disc.  A group of astronomers at the January 6th American Astronomical Society meeting in Florida announced their discovery of two distinct arcs of X-ray emitting hot gas observed using NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope; see arcs in the X-ray diagram inset above.  They propose that the arcs were formed by two outbursts from the dwarf galaxy’s core, one occurring about 3 million years ago and the other about 3 to 6 million years ago.  They suggest that these swept up cooler hydrogen gas that resided further in towards the core.  If I am not mistaken, these arcs are very good evidence for the occurrence of superwaves in nearby galaxies, ones that are apparently involved in creating a dwarf galaxies spiral arms.

Commenting on their findings, one of the group’s team members, Dr Marie Machacek, stated “This shows that black holes can create, not just destroy.”  Ignore here the word “black hole” which astronomers continue to use.  As I have stated in my journal papers and books over the past 31 years, black holes do not exist; only energy producing/emitting, supermassive cores.  If you wish to learn more about the black hole fallacy, put “black hole” in the search box on this site.  Anyway, this indicates that at least some astronomers are starting to realize that galactic cores are indeed matter/energy expelling sources.  Their belief that they power themselves solely by gobbling matter is an unsubstantiated hypothesis, as there is no way that matter can be consumed by an active galactic core.  The energy coming out is so fierce that it fragments and blows outward anything that comes near it.  The evidence for core expulsion, however, is pervasive and observationally based.

So this group’s finding that the core of NGC 5195 is seen to be expelling matter fits with the scenario proposed here that NGC 5195 is in the process of growing and forming stars, and not in the process of having them tidally stripped off.  It also generally supports the idea that the core of NGC 5195 was once expelled through a similar outburst event that once occurred in the core of its parent galaxy M51.

For more information on this discovery one can read the following article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3386722/Supermassive-black-hole-caught-BURPING-galactic-gas-Huge-blasts-seen-nearby-galaxy-created-new-stars.html#ixzz3zJMHK0nd  But be careful.  Read critically and don’t get sucked into the galaxy capturing, matter gobbling paradigm that they promote.

Composite image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory which shows the galaxy SDSS J112659.54+294442.8. The arrow points to the galactic core fragment that fisioned from the galaxy’s central core. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Team / Chandra Team / Julia M. Comerford et al.

Posted by P. LaViolette, February 4, 2016

In the June 2015 issue of the Astrophysical Journal a team of astronomers led by Dr Julia Comerford of the University of Colorado, Boulder report their observations of the central region of the distant edge-on disc galaxy SDSS J1126+2944 at a redshift of z = 0.102; see their paper at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.01391.pdf?.  The arrow in the above composite X-ray and optical image of the galaxy’s nucleus points to an ultra luminous X-ray source (intermediate mass mother star) that has been designated as J1126+2944SE.  It is estimated to have a mass between 100 and 1 million solar masses and is found to be situated within about 2.2 kiloparsecs (7000 ly) of the galaxy’s active core.

The interpretation provided by subquantum kinetics is that we are witnessing here the rare event of the fissioning of a galaxy’s supermassive core.  Such events occur from time to time in the life of a growing mother star.  Mother star’s continuously grow in mass due to the process of matter creation that takes place within them.  As a result, they grow in size and in some instances fission producing a daughter mother star, usually of lower mass.  Mother stars also lose mass by continuously expelling an ionized gas wind, especially during times when they are in their active phase.  Such core fissioning, in my opinion, is what produces satellite galaxies, such as the dwarf elliptical satellites seen around our nearest neighbor the Andromeda galaxy.  The Large Magellenic Cloud and the Small Magellenic Cloud also likely originated from expulsions, in this case from our own Galactic core.

Comerford et al. note that the outlying core is relatively devoid of stars.  This is to be expected in the case of a recent core fission event since the expelled mother star would not have had sufficient time to build up the cluster of stars that usually is seen to surround such supermassive objects.

For a news report about this finding see: http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/pair-black-holes-distant-galaxy-03546.html

As you will see from reading the above news report, as well as the Astrophysical Journal paper, the authors have interpreted their finding within the standard big bang cosmological paradigm which assumes that galaxies grow only through merging with neighboring galaxies.  So rather than a fissioning process, they interpret the close proximity of this ultra luminous X-ray source (ULX) to the galaxy’s core as an indication that the parent galaxy is capturing an incoming galaxy.  The problem with this interpretation is that the ULX is not embedded in any incoming galaxy.  In fact, it is even devoid of a surrounding stellar cloud.  Comerford et al. propose that the core appears bare because the “incoming galaxy” was stripped of its stars, but admit that J1126+29944 shows no signs of tidal disruption.

But doesn’t it seem odd that this “captured core, stripped of its stars” would happen to reside so close to the parent galaxy’s core.  In terms of galactic dimensions, 7000 light years is very close. Also note that it is rather closely aligned with the parent galaxy’s galactic plane.  Either all this is a total coincidence, or the probabilities look diminishingly small that J1126+29944SE was from an incoming galaxy and far more probable that it originated from a core ejection.  The galactic core fission interpretation appears to better explains the data and adds to the abundant evidence already available which supports the core fissioning hypothesis.  For more evidence about galactic core fissioning read Subquantum Kinetics.