We looked at the dark side of the universe- Corriere.it

Collected by Radiation telescope loafer, low frequency arrayA network of thousands of antennas was distributed throughout Europe. By developing an innovative technique, the astronomers of the Astron collaboration, which manages the machine, were able to twenty times improve the resolution of the images collected up to that moment. The effect is breathtaking. Now we can read in detail about the evolution of distant galaxies and especially the role Black holes Is too large Their training.

Terrible disasters

It can be meticulously observed The dark side of the universe, the world dominated by great disasters, From the image of an orderly and peaceful universe we know so far. You see Very large black holes The baby is located at the heart of the galaxy and aims to swallow millions of stars. When they reduce the whole world to smashing food, they emit numerous objects at the poles, which are in the form of a relative jet, which propagates thousands of light years. The plasma flaps that come with some active galaxies are so proportionate that they can hold the entire Milky Way well. Case Hercules A is a galaxy 2 billion light years from Earth. When viewed under an optical telescope, it looks like a typical elliptical galaxy like us, but when using radio waves it is much larger than us and occupies its core more than anything else. A gigantic black hole.

Sagittarius a

Even our peace Milky Way Hides in his deepest heart Sagittarius-A, a black hole 4 million times heavier than the Sun.. A mass is certainly monstrous, but it has a mass of 2.5 billion solar masses compared to the black hole at the center of Hercules A. The high-resolution images collected by Lofar allow for an accurate understanding of the dynamics of these phenomena. A fundamental role in the formation of the first galaxies. The antenna network captures images using FM radio frequencies, which, unlike light, are not absorbed by clouds of dust and gas, which usually obscure the nucleus of galaxies from observation.

Like a big radio telescope

But this is not just a picture taken, astronomers have combined the signals of more than 70,000 antennas and made them work as they are. A gigantic radio telescope with a diameter of 2,000 kilometers. To create an image, 13 terabytes of raw data are processed per second, which is equivalent to three hundred DVDs, which are then reduced and merged together. This result is possible as a result of the revolution in the world of research, combined with supercomputers, innovative computational tools, and new tools for astronomical observation.