Huge space blowtorch

Press, 10 April 1978, Page 8

Huge space blowtorch

NZPA-Reuter Pasadena, California : An object like a cosmic! (blowtorch with as much, (energy as ten thousand mil-: !lion suns has been dis-; (covered in the distant Uni-! ! verse, according to a spokesItnan for the California Institute of Technology. ! “There’s an object that! (spews matter out in a long, (tight jet, like a blowtorch,” said Mr Dennis Meredith i yesterday. He said the jet I was six light years long.

1 A light year is the dis-| ■tance light travels in one) year. :>; Mr Meredith said the! , object was one of about a dozen huge jets in other ga'llaxies, but this one was the; ' best understood. Mr Meredith said thei - object was in a galaxy that; • already had another such (blowtorch, 100,000 times! t; larger. It had been dis- ; . covered last year. ’! The galaxy was about 400!' i; million light years from; t Earth, in the constellation, I 'Ursa Minor.

The two jets together sup- ] i plied energy to a huge cloud i of gas, which lay outside the . galaxy itself. The cloud, in } turn, gave off radiation at . radio frequencies, he said. ; i Astronomers were dis-i] I covering more and more;’ (that galaxies were not justi, (quiet collections of stars,h but in some galaxies there!; were extremely violent pro-i, ; cesses going on in the}, (centre. Mr Meredith said.!. There were about a dozen of!, (these huge jets known ini, (other galaxies, but this wash ‘the best-mapped one so far. j r 4 Si,