… is a giant "ball of fire" in space.
Of course, they will have to neglect to mention it’s 250 million light years from Earth. Feeling lazy? I’ll convert it for you: that’s 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. Probably too far to do us any damage, but that didn’t stop Eric Julien. Of course, Deutsch would suppress this finding…
Anyway, the ball of fire is actually a tremendous ball of gas, something like 3 million light years across! That’s 30 times the size of our Milky Way Galaxy, and actually about the distance between us and the Andromeda Galaxy. That’s big.
It’s presumably composed of primordial hydrogen that condensed after the Big Bang. It’s massive, something like 13 trillion of times the mass of the Sun, big enough to form whole galaxies (the Milky Way is maybe 400 billion times the mass of the Sun). This thing is a monster. It’s actually not a ball of fire, and in fact is probably fairly cold. But still the description as a ball of fire isn’t too far off.
The huge ball of cold gas is inside a cluster of galaxies called Abell 3266. There is pre-existing gas inside the cluster, between the galaxies. It’s hot, millions of degrees hot. The cold gas is falling through this stuff. Like an ice cube moving through boiling water, gas is stripped off the cold ball. The rate at which it loses gas is staggering: about 20 solar masses per day. That means it outgasses enough in one day to create 20 stars like the Sun. That’s 7000 suns a year, and a million in just over a century.
Come to think of it, when I was a kid we had an old dog like that. Haha! I’m here every day, folks. Two drink minimum.
Anyway, this is pretty neat. When the gas comes off the ball it mixes with the much hotter gas and gets dispersed in between the galaxies. That’s why it’s described as a ball of fire; it’s streaming off matter like a comet, which is heated up by all the turbulence it creates in the hotter gas.
Eventually, though, it may cool (by emitting X-rays, which is how this stuff was found in the first place) and fall into the center of the cluster. A massive galaxy sits there, and will get bigger as the gas falls into it, and possibly form more stars from it. If this does happen, we’re talking a long time from now, like millions or more likely billions of years. Still, what we’re seeing now may be the precursor of star formation on a vast scale.
So that’s not scary at all. It means that even at a more advanced age, the Universe will still be cranking out stars. I think that’s good news. It’s nice to know that a few billion years from now, long after the Sun has died away, there may be more stars to take its place.
It looks like I wasn’t the only one to think of this antiscience angle. SpaceTramp did too.
June 26th, 2006 at 2:42 am
Wow, that is amazing: you can’t make this stuff up! I find that science outdoes the arts very often in aestetics, and not only with cool astronomy pictures, but conceptually as well.
For the doomsdayers among us: there is a huge fireball much closer to home…
June 26th, 2006 at 6:20 am
If this does happen, we’re talking a long time from now, like millions or more likely billions of years.
Of course what we’re seeing happened 250 million years ago…
June 26th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Yeah, I always thought there was a big ball fo firey gas just a few million miles away… Hmm.
June 26th, 2006 at 7:41 am
You said: “the Milky Way is maybe 400 million times the mass of the Sun”.
Don’t you mean 400 billions?
June 26th, 2006 at 7:49 am
The BA said “Come to think of it, when I was a kid we had an old dog like that.”
It looks like Phil has solved the largest puzzle in physics. The universe is made of DogFart.
The nobel can’t be far away.
June 26th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Hypothetically, if the gas ball in Abell 3266 were much closer to Earth – (it would then be encroaching into the Milky Way and also reaching the Andromeda galaxy as well,) it is so gigantically vast, and Earth is so tiny, would it be any dangerous to us? Probably not, though maybe over millions of years the resulting star formation from the collision of gasses would affect the solar system if many more stars formed near our local stellar neighborhood. Anyway – that was just an idle thought for fun.
June 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Interesting analogy between a “ball of fire” within an intrastellar medium and a “ball of fire” within an intra-galactic cluster medium. While miniscule comets are embedded within our solar system, this mammoth comet-like object is embedded within the intra-cluster medium of the Abell cluster 3266. A speculative thought: since this “mammoth-comet-like” object has been discovered to exist within the intra-cluster medium of Abell 3266, then I am curious if a similar object can exist within the intra-cluster medium of our Local Group. Perhaps the intra-cluster medium of Abell 3266 is uniquely conducive to producing this particular gravitationally-bound object. Regardless - in the spirit of astronomy nomenclature - this newly discovered object deserves to be identified under a unique class of cosmological objects. Moreover, this specific object deserves a more endearing name than a name such as “comet-like” or “fireball.”
June 26th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Nah, this isn’t a threat. Everyone knows this planet is going to be destroyed by gay marriage.
June 26th, 2006 at 11:16 am
If it WERE coming right for us, how long would it take to get here?
June 26th, 2006 at 11:20 am
Slightly off-topic, but it’s important to me because I like to participate…
My last comment was blocked on the grounds that it was suspected spam. Why does your blog think that my comments are spam? Is there something I should or shouldn’t do when adding a comment?
June 26th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Oops! I fixed the million/billion thing.
June 26th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Goes to show stuff in science fact can be weirder than sci-fi.
Ah, you got to love the universe!
June 26th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Has any thought been applied to the origin of the ‘fireball’? Where did it originate and what gave it it’s velocity? What mechanism could give this mass of ‘cold’ gas it’s present energy and path?
June 26th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Wow… that is so FREAKIN’COOL!
I got a mad case of the Nifty-Universe Giggles reading your description and visualizing this.
I have got to take an astronomy course.
June 26th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
250 million light years. So it only existed 250 million years ago. It sound like a long time, but it is really very recent when you compare it to events transpiring here on Earth at the same time.
250 million years ago was the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, the greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history and the one that allowed dinosaurs to take over. 250 million ago mammal ancestors were well on their way towards evolving into the true mammals that would develop less than 90 million years later. 250 million years ago Pangea was half-way between its formation and breaking up. 250 million years is only about 1/14 the amount of time life has existed on Earth, and most likely less than 1/50th the age of the universe.
250 million years ago sounds like a long time, but in reality it is about when the most recognizable things about our world started to form. It could hardly be considered a different era in the life of the universe. If this thing existed that recently, I bet it wouldn’t be suprising if such a thing still existed today.
June 27th, 2006 at 4:37 am
BURP ! (pardon me).
Pass the antacid.
Ivan.
June 27th, 2006 at 5:11 am
Phil, did you know that distance is exactly 24,140,160,000,000,000,381.41453 Km. That last bit at the end is important, (I like to be accurate), ie 381 Kilometers, and 414 meters and 530 millimeters.
Does anyone know what that distance represents? It is very pertinent to the U.S., the end bit that is.
That’s my contribution ’till I read the comments.
Ivan
June 27th, 2006 at 6:27 am
you said “250 million light years from Earth. Feeling lazy? I’ll convert it for you: that’s 15,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles”
Isn’t is more like 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles? See, it’s a lot closer than you think =)
June 27th, 2006 at 6:53 am
icemith, that’s funny!
June 27th, 2006 at 9:31 am
Oh great. We make it through the last possible life ending event and now this …
My home owner insurance rates are never gonna go down …
:p
June 27th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Dagnappit, I checked that number twice! Figures. I fixed it, thanks.
June 28th, 2006 at 4:09 am
I am thinking why there is antiscientist in this world? Are they, the antiscientists crazy? Anyway, The Bad Astronomer, have you received my email?
July 31st, 2006 at 8:18 pm
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