W2246-Bsr Research Papers

The galaxy, called W2246-0526 is the most luminous galaxy known, which means that if all galaxies were the same distance from Earth it would appear the brightest. This galaxy was formed over a billion years ago after the Big Bang. A recent discovery shows that this galaxy is releasing tremendous amounts of turbulent gas, which has never been seen before from a galaxy of this kind. The galaxy is tearing itself apart, because the momentum of the particles of light deposited in the gas are pushing gas out in all directions. Astronomers have found large amounts of ionized carbon throughout the entire galaxy. Astronomers believe that the huge black hole in the center of the galaxy is most likely the cause of the turbulence. The black hole’s event horizon is thought to be one million times smaller
The overall luminosity of the galaxy is like a combination of over 300 trillion Suns. Turbulence has been found in gas around supermassive black holes before, but the winds are found to flow in specific directions, not throughout an entire galaxy. W2246-0526 is the first galaxy to have turbulent gas spread around a whole galaxy. The turbulence isn’t just located in the accretion disk, the whole galaxy is being disrupted. Researchers have never seen anything like this before, so they are unsure whether the gas will be strong enough to leave the galaxy entirely or if it will eventually fall back. Assef believes that a possible finale could result in the galaxy blowing all of the gas and dust surrounding it. This would result in seeing the accretion disk without its dust cover, which is called a quasar. W2246-0526 is in a rare class of objects called Hot Dust- Obscured Objects, which are galaxies that are very powerful and consist of supermassive black holes in their centers. Only 1 in 3,000 of the galaxies that WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) has observed fall in this