If you’re not sure yet that the Universe is an extremely weird place, consider it like following: this whole thing started from a singularity smaller than the tip of a needle, and it constantly expands with apparently no boundaries. God knows where it came from in the first place, and what is it expanding into. And furthermore, we don’t even know for sure how small or big something can be.
And for contributing to the overall picture of the weirdness of the Universe, astronomers recently found an X-shaped galaxy that defies a lot of expectations.
PKS 2014−55 is its name
The PKS 2014-55 galaxy proves to us once more that cosmic objects don’t necessarily have to be by the book. The newfound galaxy is an unusual type of galaxy that looks like an enormous X when imaged in radio wavelengths.
Each one of the long arms of the ‘X’ is composed of particles and magnetic fields blasted out of the black hole located at the heart of the galaxy. The ‘X’ is not part of the galaxy itself, as it’s exceeding its edges with millions of light-years.
Yet the big question remains: what or who could be the culprit for creating such a weird shape? By using the massive MeerKAT radio telescope, the researchers concluded that something from the galaxy is diverting the flow into its secondary wings.
Hydrodynamical backflow model is the explanation
The researchers are proposing this theory for explaining how the PKS 2014-55 galaxy got its weird shape. What happens is that the black hole from the center of the galaxy is guzzling matter and after millions of years of doing it, the outcome is the belching of jets of matter back into space. Once again we get the proof that matter cannot be destroyed but only transformed.
The new study was accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
